[PAPER] Getting a Grip on Tangible Interaction: A Framework
on Physical Space and Social Interaction
Eva Hornecker, University of Sussex, UK
Jacob Buur, MCI & University of Southern Denmark,
Denmark
We introduce a framework that contributes to understanding
the (social) user experience of tangible interaction and
provides concepts aiding analysis and design.

[PAPER] Finding Design Qualities in a Tangible
Programming Space
Ylva Fernaeus, Jakob Tholander, Stockholm University,
Sweden
Through experimental designs we contribute to the
understanding of the design of tangible programming tools
for children. We specifically address how to support children’s
collaborative construction of screen-based systems.

[PAPER] Design Requirements for Technologies that Encourage
Physical Activity
Sunny Consolvo, Intel & University of Washington, USA
Katherine Everitt, University of Washington, USA
Ian Smith, Intel, USA
James Landay, Intel & University of Washington, USA
Presents design requirements for technology to encourage
physical activity and fitness derived from an in situ pilot
study. Can prevent designers and developers from
overlooking key elements of fitness-enabling technologies.

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Sorry I was late to this session because I was trying to get a wireless connection. The network is flooded!

[PAPER] Getting a Grip on Tangible Interaction: A Framework on Physical Space and Social Interaction Eva Hornecker, Jacob Buur

Sensors provided haptic feedback. A set of related concepts. Can users grab , feel, and move the important elements? However, elements was broadly defined as whatever the user thinks is important.

Spatial interaction always happens in a real space since space is our habitat. Our body is the reference point for interaction.

Some research questions:
- Does shifting your own body or items around have meaning?
- Can you communicate by moving your body around?

They used configurable items and tracked all items in the space to help assess movements.

Using your whole body is performative (expressive emotion - the how of how you do something)

Are representations meaningful? Something that is meaningful has represenational significance, externalization,and perceived coupling.

The scenes I have shown are perspectives and allow for systematic shifts in focus.

Questions

1. [Unmer U. Sweden] We are working with something similar - egocentric interactions. The user is the point of reference. It is difficult to design and evaluate this interaction. Do you have any methodology for design and evaluation?

It is not at the point of a methodology and I don't know if it is at the point to have a rule by rule cookbook. Having these concepts in mind and thinking through them with colloquial questions, it makes it easier to think this way.

[We are trying to use immersive virtual reality. Try to have some kind of interaction criteria to make it easier for designers to use this type of framework.]

2. [Louisiana State University] Having participated in the next generation of HCI workshop, we felt there is something holding together these areas more than just being the next step. Do you have an idea of how these can link all this together?

I'm not able to discuss that fully, but it is relevant for ubicomp that happens in spaces or mobi-hci where people walk around in a space. It is all in movement and you should not be too strict about items or space. You need to look what works with your task, what you are designing form.

[Sounds great. Do you see these stages of design equally relevant at every stage or is there something in the beginning or end?]

I think it can work for both in the beginning and end and such. I use it as a design game - I have a broad idea of what I want to design and then I think if it applies in every situation.

3. How people are competing and playing when they are participating in this social setting? When people are playing in this space - it is more natural to the human condition. Should this be further researched?

This is more in embodied facilitation. If you accept the environment - people think is this enough? Will it fuel competition? Sometimes it is good to force people to share something. You can really be tricky. You can really learn and make people really go into this competition stage.

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[PAPER] Finding Design Qualities in a Tangible Programming Space Ylva Fernaeus, Jakob Tholander

Working with children who make their own games together with visual programming tools.

They designed some tools for creating systems that allowed input without mice and keyboards.

They used physical cards to help program pieces (Yvonne Rogers has also done work with children and physical artifacts for computer input).

Design Process
- Staged activities to find out what the system should be like with low fidelity prototypes (toys)
- Activities take place on the floor, but the physical objects add interactivity to the screen

Drawbacks - Programming was difficult because tangibles can only be used once and the physical mapping was constrained by the screen and the floor space.

Coupling - referring to the relation between manipulation and effects. So you you do has a near and instant effect.

The screen looks much differen than the floor. So placing the programming card directly on the mat will not have any effect.

Questions

1. [Georgia Tech] Why did you not put the display on the floor? What issues surrounded that design decision?

Yes, we did consider it. Project a grid on the floor and use physical objects. That was difficult because when you delete an object it will not be on the floor. Mobility was a technically difficult problem. We wanted the system to be used in schools and an entire class would not be able to see it.

2. [Louisiana State] I like your use of cards. We are starting to use cards for emerging parts of the interaction. This is definitely an emerging theme. Many peopel going in this programming direction - there is a challenge because people think C, Java, and Python are programming languages - but these are too constrained. Have you looked at prolog or lisp to help broaden your scope?

Yes, our work is with TuneTalk, a constraint programming language. Yes, we have looked at many programming languages.

3. [Queensland] You talked about using children in stage base. How much did they influence the design and how did they influence design decisions?

We used role playing activities with video and analyzed the video. We looked at what they focused on in their interaction. We did a lot of analytic work. We did not so much look/ask children's own ideas.

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[PAPER] Design Requirements for Technologies that Encourage Physical Activity Sunny Consolvo, Katherine Everitt, Ian Smith, James A. Landay

Sunny started off with obesity stats to show how important it is to look at physical activity.

Scary Stat
"If 10% of adults began a regular walking program, $5.6 BILLION in heart disease costs could be saved!"

Research Q./Challenge

How can UbiComp can increase people's level of activity?

They used a cell phone as a physical journal to get your step counts. This is a lot like Chick Clique, a student design competition paper.

They used python for the cell phone.

You can decide whether to share your information with your friends for the step count.

3 week pilot study (n=13)

Their study included women who were friends 28-42 years old with non-technical occupations. $260 compensation!

Participants logged counts each day.

2 groups got the sharing software
1 group got the personal software (no sharing of step counts)

Sharing groups were statistically more likely to meet daily goal than personal group (t=2.60, p<0.05)

People enjoyed learning about their increased physical activity and participants talked about how they were integrating fitness into their lives.

4 Themes that Emerged from Qualititative Analysis

1. Give proper credit for user activities
- Participant upset that she had a 3000 step day, but she also did a 10 mile bike ride that the pedometer did not pick up
- Wanted to know what step count means (Why is my step count low? If I take smaller steps, I can get a higher step count.)
- No extra credit for walking up a hill or on flat

2. Provide personal awareness
- Participant was equating being busy to being physically active. But just being busy (sitting in a car, waiting in line), does not mean physically active.
- History of behavior encourages future activities
- Motivation - people looked at how many steps to their goal and worked to reach that goal.

3. Support social influence
- There was some stress of social pressue if they did not meet their goal

4. Consider practial constraints
- Pedometer and phone are big and ugly. It is clunky and drew unwanted attention. They constantly had to explain to their clients what they were doing.

Lots of research is being done in this area.

They are continuing these investigations and developing new applications to address first two themes.

Questions

1. [Northeastern University] Did you see any examples of bad social interactions where someone tells someone else not to go up and down hills?

There were people who looked to make sure they did not have the lowest step count. We do need to do more work on the dynamics of the group.

[Are you preselecting for any type of people?]

We used the stage of change model. We were selecting for people who were in certain stage of changes (We screened out precontemplators).

2. [Mississippi University] What was the demographic? The larger urban scale is not the best place to do this study. Largest obese people are in the south - very difficult to get people out of their cars. Can this be translated to a place like Mississippi?

Great point, we cannot say anything about that now. We are looking at the prevention side, but you are absolutely correct. We cannot generalize at this point.

3. Everyone has to exercise. The real problem is motivation. You can learn from the game industry - like the social influence. Multiplayer online games with scoring has been researched a lot. Entertainment can help you. Give the some kind of entertainment like Dance Dance Revolution. People from biomedical engineering is working on the clunky hardware like a necklace or shoes with pedometers.

Right now some of the smaller pedometers had real problems with accuracy of the activity. We want accurate and social hardware.

4. Can you speculate a little more about automating my step count. Can you let me know about how people feel about manually inputting step count and sending it.

It was mixed. Not all people (busy people) do not like the manual journalling. But manual journaling makes them more aware. Awareness brings with it motivation. The whole reason why journals work is because they have to do it manually. So we need a combination of an automatic and manual mixed journaling. Open research area.

5. [CMU] Raw data vs. aggregate information.

We are working on some stuff now that we will hopefully show next year. Aesthetic displays and barcharts.

[We are working on the same thing with Bodybugs.]

Men tend to want the numbers and women want the visual representations, but there is work to be done in this space on a variety of devices. Open research areas.

6. [Berkeley] Why did your study only include women and can you hypothesize what would happen if you include men?

Prior to this, we tested it on ourselves. Many men from the lab participated and they enjoyed it just as much as the women.

We wanted to make comparisons and medical literature shows women do behave differently in physical activity. So we used homegenous groups given the small N size.

Women said they would love to participate with their husbands.

5. Demographics - the older population - are you planning on working with retired people? Their requirements would be very different, especially dealing with the size of the cell phone they are using.

We do have an entire elder care project going on in our lab. We may roll it in with it. The big problem other researchers have is that since elders walk softly, pedometers have problems detecting steps.

[How would you detect other types of physical activites?]

U. Washington and Intel are creating a multi-sensor board that will help us find out if you are cycling, running, and going up a board using GPS and such.

6. [Palo Alto Research Center] Some people are self motivated and others socially motivated. Did you encourage your participants to share pictures or some more social activities.

The photos we're hoping to do in the future. We were using a second study cell phone - not their actual cell phone. But we would like to do that in the future. We would have liked to see more social interaction - the participants had their cell phone and the study cell phone. Hopefully in the future there will just be one cell phone.

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