Humans have an ingenious ability to shape the environment we live in.Twenty thousand years ago, this started with simple shelters and has now advanced to manipulation on a planetary scale. Human abilities are tightly linked to the tools and technologies we have at hand. Nearly nothing that surrounds us in a modern world can be created without sophisticated tools. The clothes we wear, the vehicles we use, the buildings we live and work in, and communication we rely on are only feasible due to tools and technologies humans have invented. Human evolution is inevitably linked to the tools we use. Our ability to survive and procreate goes togetherwith technological advances. Early on, tools made survival easier and freed time for humans to advance their knowledge and create even better tools. Evolution and tool use are linked. Tools and technologies have long complemented and extended our physical abilities: from pre-historic spearheads to steam-propelled ploughs and high-tech prosthetics. We have come a long way. Human abilities have increased through technology; we can talk to people on the other side of the world, travel at the speed of sound, and lift loads that are many times our own weight. This past wave ofinnovation was mainly focused on our ability to act in and manipulate the physical world. With more recent technological advancements, however, the extension of our perceptual and cognitive qualities has increasingly taken shape.@en

Mutual understanding via sharing and interpreting inner states is socially rewarding. Prior research shows that people find Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) a suitable tool to implicitly communicate their cognitive states. In this paper, we conduct an online survey (N=43) to identify design parameters for systems that implicitly share cognitive states. We achieve this by designing a research probe called "SpotlessMind" to artistically share brain occupancy with another while considering the bystanders' experience to elicit user responses. Our results show that 98% would like to see the installation. People would use it as a gesture of openness and as a communication mediator. Abstracting visual, auditory, and somatosensory depictions is a good trade-off between understandability and users' privacy protection. Our work supports designing engaging prototypes that promote empathy, cognitive awareness and convergence between individuals.@en

Despite the extensive analysis of the consequences of interruptions caused by smartphone notifications, research on the effects on users has so far been sparse. Therefore, in this work we (1) explore concepts on preventing interruptions elicited by notification delay in a focus group; (2) implement a smartphone application manipulating the notification delay in three distinct ways varying in the degree of user-control; (3) evaluate all three concepts with 13 users in a four-week field trial. We thereby gather qualitative feedback in 52 semi-structured interviews, one per participant after each mode and an additional control week. The results show that through the intensive preoccupation with their notification management, users reflect critically about advantages and disadvantages of their continuous reachability. Based on the results from the focus group and field trial, we derive four design implications summarizing the users' experiences and suggestions on notification delay mechanisms.

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Reading foreign language texts is a frequently used strategy for language learning. Visual text augmentation methods further support the learning experience, e.g., by annotating vocabulary or grammar. Common approaches are integrated dictionaries or static grammar highlights. This work investigates how we can further support grammar learning with the dynamic visualization and interaction opportunities offered by digital reading devices. In collaboration with teachers and potential learners, we identify difficulties learners experience with English grammar and gather ideas for suitable interactive text augmentations. Based on this, we design four different concepts that augment adjectives and adverbs in English-language texts using typographic cues and interactive information displays. The concepts are evaluated in a within-subject study (N = 16). Results show that participants preferred concepts that presented case-specific support, did not distract too much from the text, and gave details on demand. We conclude with design recommendations for designing text augmentation for language learning.@en

Ubiquitous technologies change the way we learn new languages. They provide easy access to multilingual media content within everyday scenarios to enhance language skills or improve vocabulary. The detection of learners’ vocabulary deficiencies is an integral part of effective language learning. However, retrieving translations during everyday media consumption causes inattention and hinders fluent learning. In this paper, we investigate Electroencephalography (EEG) to assess single-word incomprehension within non-native learning contents. In a user study (N = 10), we employed Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) to display text while recording Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) for different word difficulties. Our results show that incomprehension of words can be detected in participants’ neural responses, as is confirmed by post hoc ratings. We conclude with use case scenarios in which our approach can facilitate seamless vocabulary deficiency detection in everyday life.

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Novel ubiquitous computing systems and applications which inevitably requires prototyping physical components are explored. Smart-Its are hardware and software components that augment physical objects with embedded processing and interaction to address the need. Smart-Its addresses the need to create embedded interactive systems that disappear from the foreground to become secondary to the physical objects with which people interact during everyday activities. The Smart-Its project aims to develop a platform for context-aware embedded systems and augmented artifacts.@en

The development of Smart-Its for building smart environments is discussed. Smart-Its are small, self-contained, stick-on computers that attach to everyday objects. These augmented objects become soft media, enabling dynamic digital relationships with users and each other. A Smart-Its consists of a core board with a wireless transceiver to let the device communicate with other Smart-Its, plus a sensor board that gives the Smart-Its data about its sorroundings. The major advantage of the system is that it allows designers and researchers to construct responsive or intelligent environments.@en

In this paper we describe the design and architecture of an adaptive proactive environment in which information, which reflects the communal interests of current inhabitants, is proactively displayed on large-scale public displays. Adaptation is achieved through implicit communication between the environment and personal sensor devices worn by users. These devices, called Pendle, serve two purposes: they store and make available to the environment user preferences, and they allow users to override the environment's proactive behavior by means of simple gestures. The result is a smooth integration of environment-controlled interaction (experienced by the user as implicit interaction, triggered by their presence) and user-controlled explicit interaction. Initial results show that user-controlled adaptation leads to an engaging user experience that is unobtrusive and not distracting. Crown

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This paper presents a low-cost and practical approach to achieve basic input using a tactile cube-shaped object, augmented with a set of sensors, processor, batteries and wireless communication. The algorithm we propose combines a finite state machine model incorporating prior knowledge about the symmetrical structure of the cube, with maximum likelihood estimation using multivariate Gaussians. The claim that the presented solution is cheap, fast and requires few resources, is demonstrated by implementation in a small-sized, microcontroller-driven hardware configuration with inexpensive sensors. We conclude with a few prototyped applications that aim at characterizing how the familiar and elementary shape of the cube allows it to be used as an interaction device.@en

The situations in which human-computer interaction takes place are increasingly varied, as computers become highly portable and embedded in everyday environments. Research reported from different communities (Wearable Computing, Mobile Computing, HCI, CSCW, Augmented Reality) indicates that awareness of situations can lead to improvement of human-computer interaction. We propose a workshop at CHI2000 to provide a forum to discuss situational awareness and situated interaction. With the availability of sensing technologies, such as measuring the surrounding light conditions, the motion of the user, the orientation of a display, users' position relative to an information appliance, the number of users in front of a device, users' emotional state (bio-sensors), etc., this situational context can be captured and used as additional input to the system. The interaction process can benefit from the additional knowledge about the situation [1].@en