ABSTRACT. (TBA)

ABSTRACT. In recent years, digital fabrication equipment has experienced a significant drop in price. Devices that once were only available to scientists are now being marketed to enthusiasts as well. Sensors and complex computational ability are also now available in mobile and wearable devices. Taken together, these trends suggest the possibility for end users to design and fabricate their own customized smart objects. In this paper, we describe our initial efforts towards easy fabrication of 3D-printable smart objects that use natural properties such as acoustic resonance for interaction.

ABSTRACT. This workshop position paper presents ongoing research on using smart tangible objects for algebra learning. While mathematical manipulatives have played an important role in children’s mathematics development for decades, employing smart tangible objects in the classroom has been rarely explored yet. In our work, we investigate the potentials of using smart objects for algebra learning. Our smart tiles are based on traditional algebra tiles, passive mathematical manipulatives used in many schools in Northern America, and currently extend these by 1.) multimodal input and output capabilities, 2.) dynamic constraints and 3.) adaptivity and feedback. In this paper, we give an overview on the overall system concept, the interaction with the smart tangible objects and their current design, as well as on the potentials of actuated smart objects for future interaction.

ABSTRACT. This position paper presents key challenges that have been identified in the early stages of designing interactive digital, self-guided, exhibition sites. For every incremental iteration of digital technology, there is often also an introduction of new modes of interaction. Some build on existing interaction modes, while others introduce entirely new modes. The next wave of smart technologies, such as context aware objects and devices, enables new exciting opportunities of facilitating self-guided exhibitions through digital experience layers. However, this type of technology falls short when the user does not understand how to use them. The problem that this position paper wishes to discuss is how to implement smart technologies, so the user can leverage from existing idiomatic knowledge on more conventional widespread technologies, thus enabling the user to interact with new technologies that they are not familiar with. This paper also wishes to highlight challenges of designing digital interventions for self-guided exhibitions, without stealing the focus from the exhibition and the social interactions that can occur within.

ABSTRACT. Despite the advantages that Internet of Things (IoT) technology offers, there are still important issues to be solved to increase its practical impact. The opportunities offered by IoT can be amplified if new approaches, based on high-level abstractions and adequate interaction paradigms, are conceived to involve directly non-technical users in configuring the behavior of their smart objects. In this paper, we present our End-User Development approach, which we would like to discuss at the workshop together with the challenges our future research implies.

ABSTRACT. Machine learning algorithms are often used to automate actions in context-aware systems. This is especially the case for the Internet of Things (IoT) systems, for which computation, sensors and interaction is distributed among several device nodes. The behavior of such systems is rarely clear to the user due to the lack of visibility of the their internal state. We explore solutions to add intelligibility for IoT systems without interfering with the system itself. Intelligibility in a user interfaces ensures that users can understand and control what the system captures from the world, how it does this and how it is using this information. As part of this, our aim is to introduce interaction techniques and meta-interfaces that give users control over the system, but are not part of the system itself.

ABSTRACT. The Fog of Things, ubiquitous computing in local contexts, is a reality now. The Internet of Things has arrived, although users use and perceive it rather as Internet of Thing [sic!]. Data and information flows vertically, not horizontally through the connected Everyday and promises of convenience and quality of life are at the mercy of the viability of business models and the benevolence of multi-national commercial entities. This position paper poses that things and connectedness can also be re-thought; products and services can be designed differently: bottom-up and with stronger ideals in place. Systems of connected things can be understood as horizontal autonomous networks of nodes, Intranets, that do not or only seldom connect to external entities for the exchange of data. This paper explains how to conceptualize these systems, proposes the use of system properties to address new design challenges, and concludes with an outlook on future work.

ABSTRACT. More and more smart home devices are hitting the market. While currently application on mobile devices and classical interface elements (e.g., wall mounted switches) are used to interact with these devices, we investigate in this position paper what interaction paradigm might in the future be used. We discuss different smart home devices and argue what interaction paradigm might be most useful in the future.

ABSTRACT. Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are growing in popularity as a method of controlling smart home features. However, as VUIs grow in popularity, major obstacles still negatively impact their performance and user experience. Since VUIs are invisible by nature, users find it difficult to learn the supported features and verbal commands. Discovering the correct verbal commands is made more difficult since each user has a verbiage preference and developers of VUIs cannot pre-program all possible commands. We propose adaptable verbal commands, termed adaptable utterances, and Open User Models (OUMs) as a method to allow customization of a VUI's commands to match the individual user's preference. We review relevant research on adaptive and adaptable VUIs and identify the limitations adaptable utterances and OUMs could address. Finally, present a sample study design to evaluate our proposed methods.

ABSTRACT. Current home reminder applications are supporting mainly users with disabilities. Related work found that people of all age-groups tend to forget upcoming appointments and tasks. Therefore, there is a need for home reminder systems that support users from all age-groups in their daily lives. Today, many traditional household appliances and everyday artifacts in the users' homes are replaced with their smart counterparts. In this paper, we envision a smart home notification system that supports its users in their daily routines and schedules. In addition to current smart home notification appliances, our envisioned smart home notification system also takes smart objects such as smart mirrors into account to convey smart home notifications to the users. Further, we discuss challenges for the development of future smart home notification systems. These challenges include identifying accepted smart home notification sources, designing smart home notification systems, privacy and security concerns.

ABSTRACT. Room-level air conditioners (also referred as ACs) consume a significant proportion of total energy in residential and small-scale commercial buildings. In a typical AC, occupants specify their comfort requirements by manually setting the desired temperature on the thermostat. Though commercial thermostats (such as Tado) provide basic energy-saving features, they neither consider the influence of external factors (such as weather) to set the thermostat temperature nor offer advanced features such as monitoring the fitness level of AC. In this paper, we discuss grey-box modeling techniques to enhance existing thermostats for energy-efficient control of the ACs and provide actionable and corrective feedback to the users. Our study indicates that the enhancements can reduce occupants' discomfort by 23% when maximising the user experience, and reduce AC energy consumption by 26% during the power-saving mode.

ABSTRACT. In the last few years, head-mounted displays (HMDs) received a growing amount of attention by the scientific community, especially in the industrial domain. Due to its possibility to work hands-free while providing the user with necessary augmented information, HMDs can enhance the quality and efficiency of assembly and maintenance tasks. Offering tailored information requires knowledge about how to design and present augmented reality (AR) content. However, design guidelines especially for assembly training tasks as well as usability evaluations are very limited. In this paper, we want to overcome this limitation by introducing an application as well as 10 design recommendations for HMD-based assembly training tasks. Furthermore, we execute a user study with15 participants using an engine assembly training task to evaluate the software usability and present results from the system usability scale (SUS) questionnaire, the AttrakDiff as well as the NASA task load index (NASA-TLX) questionnaire.