Among the different sorts of challenges for the modeling and simulation community, two types of challenges face us: challenges that optimize space and time for the computer, and challenges that improve the human interface to the modeling and simulation process itself. While of these types of challenges are important for the future health of simulation, we present a grand challenge of the latter variety, based on an area termed integrative multimodeling. The purpose of integrative multimodeling is to provide a human-computer interaction environment that allows components of different model types to be linked to one another—most notably dynamic models used in simulation to geometry models for the phenomena being modeled. We specify current modeling practices in simulation and proceed to justify a need for the challenge. We then follow this with two areas: aesthetic computing and the RUBE software framework, which supports customized “notations” for dynamic models constructed using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

Accepted for publication in Artifact. Digital design materials are temporal as much as they are spatial, which means that specific concepts are needed for understanding the use experiences of digital artifacts and the aesthetics of interaction design. In this paper, the quality of pliability is introduced to characterize the degree to which interaction feels involving, malleable, and tightly coupled—and hence to which degree it facilitates exploration and serendipity in use. Three sets of contrasting artifact examples from different domains (online maps, digital-image management, and online thesaurii) are analyzed with respect to pliability. It is argued that the use of everyday digital products, normally perceived as instrumental and utility-oriented, has an important experiential-aesthetic dimension consisting of temporal and visuo-tactile qualities (including pliability). The paper concludes with a discussion of related work and the role of experiential qualities in interaction design.

Physical controls such as knobs, sliders, and buttons are experiencing a revival as many computing systems progress from personal computing architectures towards ubiquitous computing architectures. We demonstrate a process for measuring and comparing visceral emotional responses of a physical control to performance results of a target acquisition task. In our user study, participants experienced mechanical and rendered friction, inertia, and detent dynamics as they turned a haptic knob towards graphical targets of two different widths and amplitudes. Together, this process and user study provide novel affect- and performance-based design guidance to developers of physical controls for emerging ubiquitous computing environments. Our work bridges extensive human factors work in mechanical systems that peaked in the 1960’s, to contemporary trends, with a goal of integrating mechatronic controls into emerging ubiquitous computing systems. Author Keywords Haptic display, physical control, design process, affect, rotary Fitts-like task.

This paper describes an ambient intelligent prototype known as socio-ec(h)o. socio-ec(h)o explores the design and implementation of a system for sensing and display, user modeling, and interaction models based on a game structure. The game structure includes, word puzzles, levels, body states, goals and game skills. Body states are body movements and positions that players must discover in order to complete a level and in turn represent a learned game skill. The paper provides an overview of background concepts and related research. We describe the prototype and game structure, provide a technical description of the prototype and discuss technical issues related to sensing, reasoning and display. We describe how we utilized selective responses that were real-time and gradient, developed a composite model for reasoning on different groups of users, and how we customized a motion capture system for real-time bodily and positional sensing rather than gestures. We conclude with a discussion of known and outstanding technical issues, and future research.

Incorporating a human computer interaction (HCI) perspective into the systems development life cycle (SDLC) is necessary to information systems (IS) success and, in turn, to the success of businesses. However, modern SDLC models are based more on organizational needs than human needs. The human interaction aspect of an information system is usually considered far too little (only the screen interface) and far too late in the IS development process (only at the design stage). Thus, often a gap exists between satisfying organizational needs and supporting and enriching human users. This problem can be addressed by carefully integrating HCI development into the SDLC process to achieve a truly human-centered IS development approach. This paper examines the roles of HCI in systems development, justifies the importance of considering HCI through out the entire systems development life cycle, presents a methodology for human-centered IS development, and demonstrates how to apply this methodology to develop human-centered information systems.

The field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has become increasingly concerned with user experience. A variety of theoretical accounts of what experience is have been articulated in recent years which offer a number of important insights but it can be unclear how they inform design. While they stress the importance of aspects of experience such as anticipation and reflection they seldom offer data collection or analysis techniques, nor do they demonstrate how such data can be related to the design process. This paper examines several techniques to analyse and evaluate user’s experiences of interactive technology and demonstrates how a grounded theory approach can be used to generate design ideas. The paper presents three evaluative cases studies of user experience with the Orange SPV E200 “Smartphone”.

Abstract. Robots have entered our domestic lives, but yet, little is known about their impact on the home. This paper takes steps towards addressing this omission, by reporting results from an empirical study of iRobot’s Roomba™, a vacuuming robot. Our findings suggest that, by developing intimacy to the robot, our participants were able to derive increased pleasure from cleaning, and expended effort to fit Roomba into their homes, and shared it with others. These findings lead us to propose four design implications that we argue could increase people’s enthusiasm for smart home technologies.

Abstract — Human-robot interaction research is maturing to the point where we can begin to build systems that interact with people in their daily lives and provide support for particular needs. We propose that sociable robot systems are systems that comprise a sociable robot, other technological devices, methods for interaction, and methods for relationship creation and maintenance. These systems can be designed as solutions to address particular needs such as health care or behavior change goals. We discuss the social support benefits of creating a relationship between a person and a robot and offer ideas for how this might be done. A system that is currently under development in our lab to help obese patients who have recently lost weight maintain their target weight is presented as an example of this kind of sociable robot system. Index Terms — Human-robot interaction, sociable robots, sociable robot systems, obesity

This paper argues that an increasingly important dimension of the human-computer interaction is missing from the MIS and the HCI research agenda. This dimension—esthetics—plays a major role in our private, social, and business lives. It is argued that aesthetics is relevant to information technology research and practice for three theoretical reasons. (1) For many users, other aspects of the interaction hardly matter anymore. (2) Our evaluations of the environment are primarily visual, and the environment becomes increasingly replete with information technology. (3) Aesthetics satisfies basic human needs, and human needs are increasingly supplied by information technology. Aesthetics matters for a practical reason as well: it is here to stay. We propose a general framework for the study of aesthetics in information technology and provide some examples of research questions to illustrate the viability of this topic.

In this paper we offer an intelligent integrated environment for human-robot interaction. This environment takes advantage of the fact that robots are both digital and physical entities, thus improving human-robot interaction and communication. Using mixed reality, our approach brings digital information directly into the physical environment, allowing users to interact with robots ’ ideas and thoughts directly within the shared physical interaction space. We also present a taxonomy which we use to organise and classify the various interaction techniques that this environment offers. Using this taxonomy, we demonstrate by detailing three interaction techniques, thought crumbs, decorations and bubblegrams. To evaluate these techniques, we offer the design of a realisable prototype.