eHealth solutions at home are gaining interest and relevance in healthcare; however, they face challenges in sustaining motivation for therapy due to difficulties in creating meaningful connections between technology and people receiving care. In this article, we explore how embodied agents in eHealth interventions could be designed to establish a motivating relationship with people in the context of home-based stroke rehabilitation. We studied this potential by referring to the need for social relatedness in Self-Determination-Theory (SDT) and how this translates to the design of embodied agents’ characters, the collaborations they afford and the partnerships they establish over time. In co-creative ideation sessions with stroke survivors, this potential was explored, resulting in an interactive prototype of ‘Edo the Coach’, i.e. an embodied agent for home-based upper extremity stroke rehabilitation that was evaluated by stroke survivors in their home contexts. Based on the insights gained, we reflect on the potential of using SDT for designing embodied agents that foster motivational relationships between patient and agent as an answer to the growing demand for eHealth-supported self-care within an increasingly digitized healthcare context.@en

The water motion computed using 3D and 2DH models in tidally dominated shallow waters can, in some cases, differ significantly. In 2DH models, bed friction is typically parametrised in terms of the depth-averaged velocity, whereas in 3D models, typically the near-bed velocity is used. This difference causes the bed shear stress in 2DH models to point towards the depth-averaged velocity, whereas in 3D models, it points towards the near-bed velocity, which are not necessarily the same. Focussing on linearised barotropic models, we derive an exact friction parametrisation for 2DH models such that the same depth-averaged dynamics are described as in the corresponding 3D model. The result is a convolutional friction formulation where the instantaneous friction depends on the present and past velocities, thus modifying the traditional 2DH friction formulation that only depends on the present depth-averaged velocity. In the case of harmonic (tidal) waves, this parametrisation has a clear physical interpretation and shows that the near-bed velocity should be parametrised as a rotated, deformed and phase shifted variant of the depth-averaged velocity. We demonstrate that in certain regions of the parameter space, it may be impossible to calibrate a 2DH model that uses a traditional friction law to reproduce the water levels from a 3D model, showing that the 3D friction formulation can be crucial to capture the 3D dynamics within a depth-averaged model. This phenomenon is explored in detail in a narrow well-mixed estuary.

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Using HRI theory to inform robot development is an important, but difficult, endeavor. This paper explores the relationship between HRI theory and HRI practice through a design project on the development of design guidelines for human-robot communication together with a dairy farming robot manufacturer. The design guidelines, a type of intermediate-level knowledge, were intended to enrich the specialized knowledge of the company on farming context with relevant academic knowledge. In this process, we identified that HRI theories were used as a frame, a tool, best practices, and a reference; while the HRI practice provided a context, a reference, and validation for the theories. Our intended contribution is to propose a means to facilitate exchanges both ways between HRI theory and practice and add to the emerging repertoire of designerly ways of producing knowledge in HRI.

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The focus of this chapter is on the perspectives on human actions that were adopted in HCI and on how these perspectives influenced HCI research. It is argued that, historically, particular views on human actions played a major role in determining the specific research agendas, methodologies, and outcomes of HCI studies. The discussion in this chapter follows a general trend in HCI research toward increasingly more advanced notions on human actions and a respective series of extensions of the scope of the field from users’ tasks to meaningful actions in real-life contexts. The implications of the broadened scope of HCI for conceptual analyses, empirical studies, and design explorations are discussed. This chapter concludes with reflections on new conceptual developments, addressing transformative and emancipatory effects of technology on human, and even non-human, beings.

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Purpose: eHealth-based exercise therapies were developed to increase stroke patients’ adherence to home-based motor rehabilitation. However, these eHealth tools face a rapid decrease in use after a couple of weeks. This study investigates stroke patients’ motivation for home-based upper extremity rehabilitation with eHealth tools and their relation with Basic Psychological Needs. Materials and methods: This is a qualitative study using thematic analysis. We conducted semi-structured interviews with stroke patients with upper extremity motor impairments, who were discharged home from a rehabilitation centre, after they interacted with a novel eHealth coach demonstrator in their homes for five consecutive days. Results: We included ten stroke patients. Thematic analysis resulted in eight themes for home-based rehabilitation motivation: Curiosity, Rationale, Choice, Optimal challenge, Reference, Encouragement, Social Support and Trustworthiness. Those themes are embedded into three Basic Psychological Needs: “Autonomy”, “Competence”, and “Relatedness”. Conclusion: Eight motivational themes related to the three Basic Psychological Needs describe stroke patients’ motivation for home-based upper extremity rehabilitation. We recommend considering those themes when developing a home-based eHealth intervention for stroke patients to increase the alignment of eHealth tools to the patient’s needs and reduce motivational decreases in home-based rehabilitation.

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This paper looks at how contestation in the context of algorithmic decision systems is essentially the progeny of repair for our more decentralized and abstracted digital world. The act of repair has often been a way for users to contest with bad design, substandard products, and disappointing outcomes—not to mention often being a necessary aspect of ensuring effective use over time. As algorithmic systems continue to make more decisions about our lives and futures, we need to look for new ways to contest their outcomes and repair potentially broken systems. Through looking at examples of contemporary repair and contestation and tracing the history of electronics repair from discrete components into the decentralized systems of today, we look at how the shared values of repair and contestation help surface ways to approach contestation using tactics of the Right to Repair movement and the instincts of the Fixer. Finally, we speculate on roles, communities, and a move towards an agonistic interaction space where response-ability rests more equally across user, designer, and system.@en

Sensor networks are increasingly commonplace in visions of smart cities and future healthcare systems, promising greater efficiency and increased wellbeing. However, the design of these technologies remains focused on specific users and fragmented by context, overlooking the diversity of needs, wants and values present when technologies, people, and lived realities interact within instrumented spaces. In this paper we present a workshop method – Sensing Care – that can help researchers, interdisciplinary design and development teams, and potentially affected users, to explore what it takes to design for living with sensor technologies that intersect and interact across private and public spaces, through speculative scenarios and role play. Drawing from three deployments of the workshop, we discuss how this approach supports the design of future care-oriented sensor networks, and helps designers understand what it means to live with complex technologies as people traverse diverse contexts.@en

Smart wearables are increasingly used to help people deal with stress. Still, a less explored area of research in this field concerns the partnerships that smart wearables can take on when engaging people in stress-coping activities. To facilitate further understanding of the human-wearable partnerships, we designed Grippy, a smart wearable system composed of a physical glove and a smartphone application to help the wearer actively explore and cope with stress in daily situations. We introduced Grippy, as a speculative probe, to six participants (four master students and two university employees) who wore it for five successive days. Participants were interviewed about their use experience of Grippy during and after these five days. Qualitative data collected from the interviews was interpreted regarding how Grippy could fit into people’s stress-coping activities across different daily contexts and what kinds of partnerships with the smart wearable were perceived by the participants. In addition, we reflect on the design issues that led to the mismatch between our design intentions and people’s actual use experiences. We discuss how these results have deepened our understanding of human-wearable partnerships in the context of stress management and the usability issues that might hinder the expression and acceptance of smart wearables designed as partners. We end the discussion by reflecting on the implications of smart wearables as partners in mental healthcare.

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Purpose: It is important to support families in dealing with the distress that comes along with the diagnosis and treatment of childhood cancer. Therefore, we developed a playful tool that families can use at home to support their family functioning and safeguard their normal family life. We pilot tested this new tool called Mr.V and describe how families used and evaluated the tool, and how it could be further improved. Methods: Mr.V is an interactive dispenser that looks like a spaceman and proposes family activities. These activities are suggested by family members themselves and dispensed by the machine at unexpected moments. Mr.V produced data on how it was used, and a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were used to evaluate the experiences of families and the potential of this tool. Results: Ten families with a child with cancer between 5 and 9 years old (M_age = 6.7 years) who were in active treatment (mixed diagnoses) participated (n = 47; n_patients = 10, n_siblings = 9, n_parents = 16). All families used Mr.V for multiple days and were very satisfied with the tool regarding its acceptability, feasibility, and potential effectiveness. They also had suggestions on how the tool could be further improved. Conclusion: Mr.V is an acceptable and feasible tool that can be implemented by families independently at home, regardless of their level of need for support. Mr.V promoted family activities and therefore has the potential to support family functioning and normal family life at home. Future research should further investigate the effectiveness of this tool.

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Our interactions form an intricate 'dance' - a dance requiring a fluent integration of both expressivity (e.g. to approach someone) and sensitivity (e.g. detect if you 'should' approach someone). Work on behaving artefacts has focused mostly on the social, emotional and aesthetic qualities that can be evoked - expressed - through interactions involving such artefacts. Meanwhile, novel methods from social signal processing and affective computing are beginning to imbue artefacts with a reflective awareness - a sensitivity - to the emergent social aspects of the interaction. Can we empower the expressivity of behaving artefacts by integrating it with such sensitivity? With this workshop we aim to bring together a range of perspectives, on the performative and technological opportunities for such artefacts, as well as on their potential (adverse) social and societal implications; to jointly establish what will be necessary to achieve Expressive\Sensitive artefacts that positively enrich and participate in the 'dance' of social interaction.

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Introduction: Virtual reality (VR)-based interventions, wearable technology and text mining hold promising potential for advancing the way in which military and Veteran mental health conditions are diagnosed and treated. They have the ability to improve treatment protocol adherence, assist in the detection of mental health conditions, enhance resilience and increase a patient’s motivation to continue therapy. Methods: This article explores five cutting-edge research projects designed to leverage VR-based interventions, wearable technology, and text mining to improve military and Veteran mental health. A computer-animated virtual agent provides online coaching for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients in their own homes to enhance treatment compliance. A head-mounted display safely immerses PTSD patients in a virtual world to relive past experiences and associate them with new meanings. Gaming and simulation technology are tested as a way to improve resilience and performance in military members in deployment-related scenarios. Guidelines are developed for the creation of wearable assistive technology for military members and Veterans. Text mining is explored as a way to assist in the detection of PTSD. Results: VR-based therapy, gaming and simulation, wearable assistive and sensory technology, and text mining hold promise for diagnosing, monitoring, and treating military mental health conditions. Discussion: The five research projects presented have made promising contributions to the field of military and Veteran mental health, either by advancing diagnostic trajectories, contributing to therapy or enhancing the process by developing new approaches to delivering preventive or curative care.@en

In the context of human-agent interaction, we see the emergence of computational artefacts that display hybridity because they can be experienced as tools and agents. In this paper we propose a tool-agent spectrum as an analytical lens that uses ‘intention’ as a central concept. This spectrum aims to clarify how a computational object can change from being conducive to the intentions of others (‘tool’) to appearing to have intentions of its own (‘agent’), or vice versa. We have applied this analytical lens to unravel people’s experiences in two hybrid cases; guide dogs as a living mobility aid for the visually impaired and an experimental wearable object named “BagSight” as a rudimentary artificial
counterpart. We compared both cases through the lens of a toolagent spectrum and elaborate on these results by discussing some of the principles by which computational artefacts can shift across the spectrum. We conclude by discussing the limitations of this study and provide suggestions for future work.@en

In the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), there is an increasing interest in designing for well-being. With this contribution, we introduce Tactful Objects as a design perspective on interactive artifacts that empower people in sensitive settings. We explore the concept of tactfulness by designing two interactive artifacts addressing the needs of families dealing with childhood cancer. The first, Mr.V, is an interactive dispenser to stimulate social activities in the family. The second, AscoltaMe, is a kind of walkie-talkie to enhance communication between family members. Eight families in treatment were invited to try out one of these artifacts at home. We report on how they perceived the objects’ impact on family life, how they used and appreciated the objects and how the objects embedded at home. The findings highlight that Tactful Objects enable people to act with respect for their vulnerabilities and circumstances by establishing partnerships and collaborations that are inviting and appropriate for the setting in which they are embedded. We then reflect on the contribution of the work for research in healthcare and design for other sensitive settings. We conclude by presenting the limitations of the study and provide directions for future work.

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Since its introduction, Research through Design (RtD) has taken on a wide variety of forms. Currently, there is a lack of clarity about what connects and separates different RtD approaches. Several attempts have been made to clarify these matters, often in the form of a top-down categorization. Here we start on a different path, one that is open for different points of view and grounded in the ongoing concerns and needs of RtD practitioners. Over a two-month period, we engaged a local research community in weekly discussions about RtD in their work. Thoughts and questions were posted on a dedicated wall-space, maintained, and clustered over the weeks. As a result, we identified 11 themes that indicate concerns among participants about RtD. We suggest the themes can help in articulating different RtD ‘styles’ and ‘genres’, and believe this should be a collaborative and bottom-up effort that crosses disciplinary and institutional boundaries.@en

Stress is an important aspect of mental health which impacts on wellbeing. Wearable devices are increasingly used to help people deal with stress in daily life. However, most of the current applications focus on detecting and representing physiological data. In this paper we report on the design of an integrated wearable system composed of physiological sensors and a self-reporting interface. Through an iterative design process, we developed two prototypes and evaluated their technical performance in a laboratory condition. We elaborate on the issues we have encountered and addressed in the design iterations. We discuss how these lessons might contribute to the design of integrated sensing systems in real life. We end this paper by reviewing limitations of the study and directions for future work.Keywords: smart wearables, stress management, design for mental health@en

This contribution illustrates the Research through Design process of Mr.V the Spaceman, a tactful object meant to support families of children with cancer maintain a healthy domestic life during stressful times. By recounting insights from the field and unfolding changes to the original artifact over a period of two years, the paper illuminates how an understanding of tactfulness has emerged and developed into a key design quality for this work. This complex and entangled process of making is surfaced and illustrated by a rich and scrupulous annotation of the artisanal craft and technological explorations that led from the original Mr.V prototype to what is now Mr.V the Spaceman.@en

This paper develops a set of design strategies for promoting young children’s physical activity. These strategies are developed by taking the design perspective of Playscapes as a starting point. Playscapes suggests that three play qualities are key in promoting young children’s physical activity: free, bodily, and dispersed play. We present two field studies in a pediatric oncology center, in which we observed how these play qualities were reflected in children’s interactions with two Playscape designs: Stickz, a collection of branch-shaped objects, were placed in a semi-public waiting area; Fizzy, a self-propelled robotic ball, was introduced to patient rooms. Free play was analyzed according to the diversity of play activities, bodily play according to the diversity and exertion level of bodily movements, and dispersed play according to the floor area covered. Based on the findings, we discuss how Fizzy and Stickz contributed to each play quality, and derive a set of design strategies that can be applied in different contexts to stimulate young children’s physical activity. With these strategies, Playscapes offers a concrete alternative to existing approaches, supporting designers in directing interactions towards physical activity while leaving room for children’s unstructured and spontaneous play.@en

We propose an approach to designing smart wearables that act as partners to help people cope with stress in daily life. Our approach contributes to the developing field of smart wearables by addressing how technological capabilities can be designed to establish partnerships that consider the person, the situation, and the appropriate type of support. As such, this study also contributes to healthcare by opening up novel technology-supported routes to stress treatment and care. We present the results of a phenomenological study conducted with three war veterans who suffer from chronic posttraumatic stress disorder. We describe how their experiences of dealing with their stress informed our design approach, and discuss the implications of these results on smart wearables and stress management in general. We conclude by reflecting on the limitations of this study and directions for future work.

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In HCI there is an increasing trend to approach computing artifacts as agents. In this article, we make a case for "Objects with Intent" (OwI's) as an emerging type of agents that take advantage of the meaning of everyday things as the site for their intelligence and agency. After reviewing relevant existing research in HCI and related fields, we demonstrate how OwI's provide a new perspective on human-agent interaction. We then elaborate on how the notion of OwI's is informed by Dennett's theory of intentionality and Leontiev's Activity Theory. Thereafter, we illustrate the application of OwI's through the design case of Fizzy, a robotic ball used to stimulate hospitalized children to engage in physical play. We end by discussing the nature and merit of OwI's and reflecting more broadly on the challenges involved in designing OwI's.

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Design is increasingly concerned with changing people’s behaviours. A common characteristic to behavioural design approaches is their directionality: products provide clarity about or guidance towards the designer’s intended behavioural outcome. In this paper we propose an alternative perspective that emphasizes ambiguity (i.e. affording multiple interpretations) and open-endedness (i.e. affording multiple courses of action). We build on two design cases in pediatric healthcare in which the aim was to stimulate young children’s physical activity during hospitalization. Instead of commonly used exercise-based approaches, our focus was on physical activity in the form of spontaneous and unstructured play. We describe how interactions with ambiguous and open-ended playthings gave rise to intended behavioural outcomes. The findings are explained by drawing on Activity Theory, suggesting products can direct and leave things open on different levels of interaction. With our contribution we open up a new design space for behavioural design that reconciles designer’s intentions with end user’s appropriation.@en