LATEST PUBLICATIONS

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  • Introduction to the Special Issue on ASSETS’20
  • Georgios Kouroupetroglou and Hugo Nicolau. 2022. Introduction to the Special Issue on ASSETS’20. ACM Trans. Access. Comput. 15, 2. http://doi.org/10.1145/3542810
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  • Inclusive’R’Stories: An Inclusive Storytelling Activity with an Emotional Robot
  • Cristiana Antunes, Isabel Neto, Filipa Correia, Ana Paiva, and Hugo Nicolau. 2022. Inclusive’R’Stories: An Inclusive Storytelling Activity with an Emotional Robot. Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, IEEE Press, 90–100. http://doi.org/10.5555/3523760.3523776
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Storytelling has the potential to be an inclusive and collaborative activity. However, it is unclear how interactive storytelling systems can support such activities, particularly when considering mixed-visual ability children. In this paper, we present an interactive multisensory storytelling system and explore the extent to which an emotional robot can be used to support inclusive experiences. We investigate the effect of the robot’s emotional behavior on the joint storytelling process, resulting narratives, and collaboration dynamics. Results show that when children co-create stories with a robot that exhibits emotional behaviors, they include more emotive elements in their stories and explicitly accept more ideas from their peers. We contribute with a multisensory environment that enables children with visual impairments to engage in joint storytelling activities with their peers and analyze the effect of a robot’s emotional behaviors on an inclusive storytelling experience.
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  • Investigating the Tradeoffs of Everyday Text-Entry Collection Methods Best Paper Award
  • André Rodrigues, Hugo Nicolau, André Santos, et al. 2022. Investigating the Tradeoffs of Everyday Text-Entry Collection Methods. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  Typing on mobile devices is a common and complex task. The act of typing itself thereby encodes rich information, such as the typing method, the context it is performed in, and individual traits of the person typing. Researchers are increasingly using a selection or combination of experience sampling and passive sensing methods in real-world settings to examine typing behaviours. However, there is limited understanding of the effects these methods have on measures of input speed, typing behaviours, compliance, perceived trust and privacy. In this paper, we investigate the tradeoffs of everyday data collection methods. We contribute empirical results from a four-week field study (N=26). Here, participants contributed by transcribing, composing, passively having sentences analyzed and reflecting on their contributions. We present a tradeoff analysis of these data collection methods, discuss their impact on text-entry applications, and contribute a flexible research platform for in the wild text-entry studies.
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  • DAN & Danny: Combining Analog and Digital Self-Tracking Data to Manage Wellbeing
  • João Nogueira, Tomas Alves, and Hugo Nicolau. 2021. DAN & Danny: Combining Analog and Digital Self-Tracking Data to Manage Wellbeing. Proceedings of the International Conference on Graphics and Interaction, IEEE.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  An uprising trend of Personal Informatics has leveraged mobile applications to help users track their wellbeing; however, these digital solutions focus on quantitative data, lacking the insights provided by qualitative data in paper notebooks. We propose to digitally augment a paper diary to allow both analogue and digital data, bridging the gap between qualitative and quantitative data tracking practices to support better awareness and reflection on health data. As a first case-study, we designed a self-tracking tool to help college students manage their wellbeing by increasing self-awareness and easing help-seeking behaviours. Next, we conducted a longitudinal study to validate the tool’s effectiveness and analyse its acceptability. Results show that our approach helped students by allowing moments of selfreflection and self-awareness. Additionally, our findings suggest that qualitative data is most useful when important events and abrupt changes to wellbeing occur. Preference for paper or digital diaries is highly user-dependent; however, most participants favoured a digital-only tool with notetaking capabilities.
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  • PlayHIIT: Augmenting Remote Exertion Experiences through Playful Interaction
  • Francisco Teotonio, Tomas Alves, and Hugo Nicolau. 2021. PlayHIIT: Augmenting Remote Exertion Experiences through Playful Interaction. Proceedings of the International Conference on Graphics and Interaction, IEEE.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  The recent uprising trend of remote approaches to group physical activity has shown how these strategies lack social engagement. Following a user-centred design process grounded on the Playful Experience (PLEX) Framework’s dimensions, we developed an augmentation of video conference-based group exercise to enhance the social dynamics of high-intensity interval training. We conducted a user study (N = 12) to analyse the effect of our approach on the perceived playfulness of the experience, enjoyment, and effort of participants. Results show an increase in the PLEX Framework dimensions of Competition and Sensation. Additionally, our findings suggest positive trends in the participants’ enjoyment and effort, thus raising new design implications related to the design space of videoconference group exercise interfaces.
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  • Crowdsensing-enabled service design for floating students during the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Shuao Ma, Valentina Nisi, Augusto Esteves, et al. 2021. Crowdsensing-enabled service design for floating students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proceedings of the International Association of Societies of Design Research.
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF]

  This pictorial presents the concept and preliminary design of “Tecnico Go!”, an application conceived to support college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project applied HCI and user-centred design methods to understand students’ needs, pains, and desires during the pandemic period. The authors collected, unpacked, and reflected on user-centred data, synthesised personas and scenarios via the research through design approach. Synthesis of results points to the concept of “floating students” as a model embracing flexibility in visiting the campus safely and using the facilities when needed. Problem-oriented student journeys were identified and then used to ideate solution-oriented scenarios and a service blueprint to illuminate the continued development of the “Tecnico Go!” mobile application. This pictorial illustrates this process from data collection through customer journeys, user-centred blueprint and wireframes.
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  • WildKey: A Privacy-Aware Keyboard Toolkit for Data Collection In-the-Wild
  • André Rodrigues, André Santos, Kyle Montague, Hugo Nicolau, and Tiago Guerreiro. 2021. WildKey: A Privacy-Aware Keyboard Toolkit for Data Collection In-the-Wild. UbiComp/ISWC Workshop on Designing Ubiquitous Health Monitoring Technologies for Challenging Environments, arXiv. Retrieved from https://techandpeople.github.io/wildkey/
  • [ABSTRACT] [PDF] [LIBRARY]

  Touch data, and in particular text-entry data, has been mostly collected in the laboratory, under controlled conditions. While touch and text-entry data has consistently shown its potential for monitoring and detecting a variety of conditions and impairments, its deployment in-the-wild remains a challenge. In this paper, we present WildKey, an Android keyboard toolkit that allows for the usable deployment of in-the-wild user studies. WildKey is able to analyse text-entry behaviours through implicit and explicit text-entry data collection while ensuring user privacy. We detail each of the WildKey’s components and features, all of the metrics collected, and discuss the steps taken to ensure user privacy and promote compliance.