Test2

Human-Computer Integration (HInt) is an emerging paradigm in which computational and human systems are closely interwoven. Integrating computers with the human body is not new. However, we believe that with rapid technological advancements, increasing real-world deployments, and growing ethical and societal implications, it is critical to identify an agenda for future research. We present a set of challenges for HInt research, formulated over the course of a five-day workshop consisting of 29 experts who have designed, deployed, and studied HInt systems. This agenda aims to guide researchers in a structured way towards a more coordinated and conscientious future of human-computer integration.

Encouraged by technological advancements, more and more companies consider virtual reality (VR) for training of their workforce in particular for situations that occur rarely, are dangerous, expensive, or very difficult to recreate in the real world. Thereby the need arises for understanding the potentials and limitations of VR training and establishing best practices. In pursuit of this, we have developed a VR Training simulation for a use case at Grundfos, in which apprentices learn a sequential maintenance task. We evaluated this simulation in a user study with 36 participants, comparing it to two traditional forms of training (Pairwise Training and Video Training). This paper describes the developed virtual training scenario and discusses design considerations for such VR simulations. Further, it presents the results of our evaluation, which support that VR Training is effective in teaching the procedure of a maintenance task. However, according to our evidence, traditional approaches with hands-on experience still lead to a significantly better outcome.

We propose using virtual reality (VR) as a design tool for sketching and simulating spatially-aware interactive spaces. Using VR, designers can quickly experience their envisioned spaces and interactions by simulating technologies such as motion tracking, multiple networked devices, or unusual form factors such as spherical touchscreens or bezel-less display tiles. Design ideas can be rapidly iterated without restrictions by the number, size, or shape and availability of devices or sensors in the lab. To understand the potentials and challenges of designing in VR, we conducted a user study with 12 interaction designers. As their tool, they used a custom-built virtual design environment with finger tracking and physics simulations for natural interactions with virtual devices and objects. Our study identified the designers' experience of space in relation to their own bodies and playful design explorations as key opportunities. Key challenges were the complexities of building a usable yet versatile VR-based "World Editor".

Identifying the ongoing research in one's field is an essential yet time-intensive information seeking task. Today's digital libraries support researchers in the search and discovery of published academic research. However, they are unable to support researchers in the discovery of ongoing research, i.e., research that has not yet been published. The discovery of ongoing research thus remains a manual information seeking task lacking standardized processes or automated support systems. We present findings from an initial qualitative study on how computer science researchers from four disciplines currently go about identifying ongoing research projects within their fields and the challenges they face. A major challenge we identify is what we term the discovery-confidentiality trade-off. On the one hand, researchers express a need to discover ongoing research projects in their domain to identify collaboration partners and to avoid performing duplicate research. However, at the same time, researchers are hesitant to reveal details about their own in-progress research for fear of idea plagiarism. We discuss several key factors influencing this trade-off, such as trust and timeliness. We argue that these factors must be accounted for in the design of future academic search and recommendation solutions to support researchers in the timely identification of ongoing research.

Analysing and understanding brain function and disorder is the main focus of neuroscience. Due to the high complexity of the brain, directionality of the signal and changing activity over time, visual exploration and data analysis are difficult. For this reason, a vast amount of research challenges are still unsolved. We explored different challenges of the visual analysis of brain data and the design of corresponding immersive environments in collaboration with experts from the biomedical domain. We built a prototype of an immersive virtual reality environment to explore the design space and to investigate how brain data analysis can be supported by a variety of design choices. Our environment can be used to study the effect of different visualisations and combinations of brain data representation, as for example network layouts, anatomical mapping or time series. As a long-term goal, we aim to aid neuro-scientists in a better understanding of brain function and disorder.

We present SMARTEXPLORE, a novel visual analytics technique that simplifies the identification and understanding of clusters, correlations, and complex patterns in high-dimensional data. The analysis is integrated into an interactive table-based visualization that maintains a consistent and familiar representation throughout the analysis. The visualization is tightly coupled with pattern matching, subspace analysis, reordering, and layout algorithms. To increase the analyst’s trust in the revealed patterns, SMARTEXPLORE automatically selects and computes statistical measures based on dimension and data properties. While existing approaches to analyzing highdimensional data (e.g., planar projections and Parallel coordinates) have proven effective, they typically have steep learning curves for non-visualization experts. Our evaluation, based on three expert case studies, confirms that non-visualization experts successfully reveal patterns in high-dimensional data when using SMARTEXPLORE.

Prolonged sedentary behavior contributes to many chronic diseases. An appropriate reminder could help screen-based workers to reduce their prolonged sedentary behavior. The fixed-duration point-of-choice prompt has been frequently used in related work. However, this prompting system has several drawbacks. In this paper, we propose the SedentaryBar, a context-aware reminding system using an always-on progress bar to show the duration of a working session, as an alternative to the prompt. The new reminding system uses both users' keyboard/mouse events on the computer and the state-of-the-art computer vision algorithm with the webcam to detect users' presence, which makes the system more accurate and intelligent. Our evaluation study compared the SedentaryBar and the prompt using subjective and objective measurements. After using each method for a week respectively, more participants preferred the SedentaryBar. The participants' perceived interruption and usefulness also suggested the SedentaryBar was more popular during the study. However, the logged data of the participants' working durations indicated the prompt was more effective in reducing their sedentary behavior.

We present a digital assistance approach for applied metrology on near-symmetrical objects. In manufacturing, systematically measuring products for quality assurance is often a manual task, where the primary challenge for the workers lies in accurately identifying positions to measure and correctly documenting these measurements. This paper focuses on a use-case, which involves metrology of small near-symmetrical objects, such as LEGO bricks. We aim to support this task through situated visual measurement guides. Aligning these guides poses a major challenge, since fine grained details, such as embossed logos, serve as the only feature by which to retrieve an object's unique orientation. We present a two-step approach, which consists of (1) locating and orienting the object based on its shape, and then (2) disambiguating the object's rotational symmetry based on small visual features. We apply and compare different deep learning approaches and discuss our guidance system in the context of our use case.

Nurses who care about patients with functional disabilities are frequently required to transfer a patient from one place to another. To prevent nurses from injuring themselves during patient transfers, many government-supported schools in Germany provide programs which teach how to conduct transfers based on the kinaesthetics care conception. However, the program is typically limited to merely three lectures. With the goal of promoting nurses’ health behavior, we analyzed current practices in kinaesthetics education and explored how interactive technology can extend those practices. We interviewed nursing-care teachers (N = 5) and students (N = 27), and conducted four contextual inquiries during kinaesthetics course sessions. A qualitative analysis of the data revealed three themes. Based on these, we describe a set of implications to support the learning of kinaesthetics-based transfers by means of technology. We propose the use of the implications as initial design goals for user-centered design processes and exemplify their application by illustrating a concept for a tablet-based learning system.

Outreach and citizen science are important aspects in research and development. For example, the collection of bird-related data is driven forward by non-professional ornithologists as well as by researchers. At the exhibition “From Lake Constance to Africa, a long distance travel with ICARUS” which took place during the summer 2018 at the island Mainau in Germany, a Virtual Reality (VR) installation was shown utilizing movement data of a flock of storks. Two VR binoculars were installed which were used by the visitors to observe storks flying, following their way from Lake Constance towards Africa based on GPS data of real storks. In this way, viewers experienced a 360° view on top of the stork “Bubbel” as it flies with 26 flock mates. The VR binoculars were created as a 3D print equipped with a smartphone, VR headset and other special features enabling the long-term use. The overall project consists of three components: 1) the production software Bird Watcher, 2) the exhibitioncompatible exploration software Bird 360°, as well as 3) the hardware setup: the Sword of Stork Bubbel.

Handheld Augmented Reality (AR) displays offer a see-through option to create the illusion of virtual objects being integrated into the viewer’s physical environment. Some AR display technologies also allow for the deactivation of the see-through option, turning AR tablets into Virtual Reality (VR) devices that integrate the virtual objects into an exclusively virtual environment. Both display configurations are typically available on handheld devices, raising the question of their influence on users’ experience during collaborative activities. In two experiments, we studied how the different display configurations influence user experience, workload, and team performance of co-located and distributed collaborators during a spatial referencing task. A mixed-methods approach revealed that participants’ opinions were polarized towards the two display configurations, regardless of the spatial distribution of collaboration. Based on our findings, we identify critical aspects to be addressed in future research to better understand and support co-located and distributed collaboration using AR and VR displays.

We present Codestrate Packages, a package-based system to create extensible software within Codestrates. Codestrate Packages turns content creation from an application-centric model into a document-centric model. Codestrate Packages no longer restrict users to the feature set of the application. Instead packages allow users to add new features to their documents while already working on them. They can match the features to their current task at hand. Supporting the reprogrammable nature of Codestrates, new features can also be implemented by users themselves and shared with other people without having to leave the document. We illustrate the application of Codestrate Packages in an example scenario and present its technical concepts. We plan to conduct multiple user studies to investigate the benefits and barriers of Codestrate Packages' document-centric approach.

In diesem Beitrag stellen wir das Konzept der Hybriden Exponate vor. Ziel dieses Interaktionskonzepts ist der kombinierte Einsatz von realer und virtueller Informationsvermittlung, ohne die Aura des Originals zu beeinträchtigen. Am Beispiel der Ausstellung „Archäologie in Baden“ des Badischen Landesmuseum Karlsruhe zeigen wir auf, wie Hybride Exponate in Ausstellungen eingesetzt werden können und wie solche Exponate mithilfe von neuartigen interaktiven Medien kontextualisiert werden können.

PolarTrack is a novel camera-based approach to detecting and tracking mobile devices inside the capture volume. In PolarTrack, a polarization filter continuously rotates in front of an off-the-shelf color camera, which causes the displays of observed devices to periodically blink in the camera feed. The periodic blinking results from the physical characteristics of current displays, which shine polarized light either through an LC overlay to produce images or through a polarizer to reduce light reflections on OLED displays. PolarTrack runs a simple detection algorithm on the camera feed to segment displays and track their locations and orientations, which makes PolarTrack particularly suitable as a tracking system for cross-device interaction with mobile devices. Our evaluation of PolarTrack's tracking quality and comparison with state-of-the-art camera-based multi-device tracking showed a better tracking accuracy and precision with similar tracking reliability. PolarTrack works as standalone multi-device tracking but is also compatible with existing camera-based tracking systems and can complement them to compensate for their limitations.

The research project ERTRAG, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, aims to develop a virtual ergonomics trainer for nursing as well as elderly care education. The trainer supports apprentices conducting the care related motions in an ergonomically correct fashion, thereby helping to prevent work-related health problems such as dorsal pain. The user interface of the ERTRAG system for instruction and feedback adjusts to the individual preferences and needs, as well as to the current cognitive state of the user. This adaptive, highly customizable human-machine interaction fosters effective and long-lasting learning.

In the domain of human behavior prediction, next-place prediction is an active research field. While prior work has applied sequential and temporal patterns for next-place prediction, no work has yet studied the prediction performance of combining sequential with temporal patterns compared to using them separately. In this paper, we address next-place prediction using the sequential and temporal patterns embedded in human mobility data that has been collected using the GPS sensor of smartphones. We test five next-place prediction methods, including single pattern-based methods and hybrid methods that combine temporal and sequential patterns. Instead of only examining average accuracy as in related work, we additionally evaluate the selected methods using incremental-prediction accuracy on two publicly available datasets (the MDC dataset and the StudentLife dataset). Our results suggest that (1) integrating multiple patterns is not necessarily more effective than using single patterns in average prediction accuracy, (2) most of the tested methods can outperform others for a certain time period (either for the prediction of all places or each place individually), and (3) average prediction accuracies of the top-three candidates using sequential patterns are relatively high (up to 0.77 and 0.91 in the median for both datasets). For real-time applications, we recommend applying multiple methods in parallel and choosing the prediction of the best method according to incremental-prediction accuracy. Lastly, we present an expert tool for visualizing the prediction results.

Scientific evidence has shown that long-term sedentary behaviour is detrimental to human health. Therefore, a trend appears in the field of healthy lifestyle promotion that more attention is drawn to sedentary behaviour rather than only physical activity. However, technology-based mobile health intervention tools targeting reducing sedentary behaviour are still lacking. This paper aims to explore a solution for sedentary behaviour change through supporting action planning. Action planning can not only bridge the intention-behavior gap in controlled motivation processes, but also enforce the cue-behavior association in unconscious processes. We present a smartphone-based personal mobility pattern visualization, with which we expect the users can make better action plans. The interactive visualization integrates temporal and spatial patterns of personal sedentary and walking behaviour, to provide explicit hints on when, where, and how to reduce sedentary behaviour and increase daily steps. We also present our experimental design to evaluate the visualization- based intervention tool.

We present Ownershift, an interaction technique for easing overhead manipulation in virtual reality, while preserving the illusion that the virtual hand is the user's own hand. In contrast to previous approaches, this technique does not alter the mapping of the virtual hand position for initial reaching movements towards the target. Instead, the virtual hand space is only shifted gradually if interaction with the overhead target requires an extended amount of time. While users perceive their virtual hand as operating overhead, their physical hand moves gradually to a less strained position at waist level. We evaluated the technique in a user study and show that Ownershift significantly reduces the physical strain of overhead interactions, while only slightly reducing task performance and the sense of body ownership of the virtual hand.

"Rebuild Palmyra?" is a multimedia exhibition about the ancient city of Palmyra, its destruction by Daesh, and the question of whether it should be rebuilt. As such, it tackles today's pressing question of how humanity should deal with the destruction of cultural heritage. In the design of the exhibition, we pursued the Blended Museum approach, in which we strive to seamlessly integrate interactive media into exhibition design to increase the overall visitor experience. In this work, we present the exhibition, which consists of four rooms. We focus on three interactive installations in which the topic of reconstructing Palmyra is mediated using new technologies such as 3D Printing, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. The installations helped visitors in developing their own point of view on the question of rebuilding Palmyra. Lastly, we provide insights into the technical implementation of the installations and discuss the results of quantitative and qualitative evaluations.

The traditional education of basic activities in nursing care (e.g. patient mobilization or hygiene) poses different limitations like, e.g. restricted options for self-education or limited realism in the learning context. By blending the real-world with virtual content, Mixed Reality (MR) technology holds great potential to address given shortcomings in interactive learning scenarios. In this work we explore how Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) can inform the development of MR systems for basic nursing care education. We conducted a review of the current employment of MR and Virtual Reality (VR) displays (including desktop-based ones) in basic nursing care education and discuss our results in respect to the conceptual HCI framework Blended Interaction. In contrast to existing reviews, our work differs by placing a clear focus on activities of basic nursing care education and the question how HCI can inspire the design of MR applications which support such activities. We first conducted a search of the Web of Science Core Collection based on predefined search terms. 139 publications were found. We filtered them by inclusion criteria to ensure that only papers which use MR or VR displays to support basic nursing care education remained. The remaining publications were viewed with respect to the four domains of design provided by the Blended Interaction framework, namely (1) individual interaction, (2) social interaction and communication, (3) workflow and (4) physical environment. Our results indicate that MR in basic nursing care education just barely scratches the surface. The majority of systems employs desktop-based VR. Most systems facilitate individual interactions by mouse, keyboard or specific haptic devices, support limited or no social interactions, provide structured workflows or free interactions, and employ 2-dimensional VR displays to simulate work environments. Future MR systems could allow for more realistic interactions, stimulate collaboration through 3-dimensional real-world overlays, enhance learning workflows by rendering or deliberately hiding information within real-world scenarios, and facilitate immersive environments with physically enabled virtual objects. In conclusion, we show that the present use of MR in basic nursing care education is limited and introduce directions for design which can help leveraging the technologies’ full potential in the future.