User Experience, Attitude towards Replay and Play Endings - a semi-Situated Study of an Interactive Play Space Interactive Play Spaces can support positive behaviour. Play endings, user experience (UX), and replay intention, can play an important role to achieve this. However, the relation between these aspects is underexplored. We explore how different types of endings–open, closed positive (winning), and closed negative (losing)–affect user experience and attitude towards replay in a semi-situated study with 93 adults in a science center. While assigned ending conditions did not significantly influence reported experience, many participants, significantly in the open-ended condition, perceived their assigned ending condition differently. Analysis on these self-reported endings revealed that players who experienced a closed negative ending reported higher Stimulation (UEQ). Additionally, user experience dimensions (Attractiveness, Dependability, Stimulation) and Positive Affect (I-PANAS-SF) positively related to attitude towards replay. These findings provide insights into the relation between play endings, UX and attitude towards replay, and highlight the importance of inquiring about experienced experimental conditions in user research.2025DMDanica Mast et al.Game UX & Player BehaviorRole-Playing & Narrative GamesDIS
The Gulf of Interpretation: From Chart to Message and Back AgainCharts are used to communicate data visually, but often, we do not know whether a chart's intended message aligns with the message readers perceive. In this mixed-methods study, we investigate how data journalists encode data and how members of a broad audience engage with, experience, and understand these visualizations. We conducted workshops and interviews with school and university students, job seekers, designers, and senior citizens to collect perceived messages and feedback on eight real-world charts. We analyzed these messages and compared them to the intended message. Our results help to understand the gulf that can exist between messages (that producers encode) and viewer interpretations. In particular, we find that consumers are often overwhelmed with the amount of data provided and are easily confused with terms that are not well known. Chart producers tend to follow strong conventions on how to visually encode particular information that might not always benefit consumers.2025CKChristian Knoll et al.University of Vienna, Faculty of Computer Science, Doctoral School Computer ScienceInteractive Data VisualizationVisualization Perception & CognitionCHI
Encountering Friction, Understanding Crises: How Do Digital Natives Make Sense of Crisis Maps?Crisis maps are regarded as crucial tools in crisis communication, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change crises. However, there is limited understanding of how public audiences engage with these maps and extract essential information. Our study investigates the sensemaking of young, digitally native viewers as they interact with crisis maps. We integrate frameworks from the learning sciences and human-data interaction to explore sensemaking through two empirical studies: a thematic analysis of online comments from a New York Times series on graph comprehension, and interviews with 18 participants from German-speaking regions. Our analysis categorizes sensemaking activities into established clusters: inspecting, engaging with content, and placing, and introduces responding personally to capture the affective dimension. We identify friction points connected to these clusters, including struggles with color concepts, responses to missing context, lack of personal connection, and distrust, offering insights for improving crisis communication to public audiences.2025LKLaura Koesten et al.|University of Vienna, Faculty of Computer ScienceGeospatial & Map VisualizationSmart Cities & Urban SensingClimate Change Communication ToolsCHI
Algae Alight: Exploring the Potential of Bioluminescence through Bio-kinetic PixelsIncorporating living microorganisms in artifacts offers opportunities for novel modes of expression and interaction. Bioluminescent algae are unicellular microorganisms that produce light in response to kinetic stimuli and have been a focus of design and HCI research when exploring expressivity of living media. This study advances prior work using bioluminescent algae through designing and engineering a Living Light Interface comprising of bio-kinetic pixels. The resulting interactive system translates digital input into the biological domain by modulating the bioluminescent mechanism and creating different pixel states. The kinetic design of the vibration module uses adjustable weights to induce a wide range of lighting patterns. The hardware design is coupled with organism-centric algorithms, which allow for the generation of dynamic light patterns across the interface. The paper provides a comprehensive visual narrative of a design process that brings these living organisms to the forefront of our technological imagination, blurring the boundaries between biology, algorithmic control, and tangible interfaces.2024ZBZoë Breed et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDigital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceDIS
Simulating Emotions With an Integrated Computational Model of Appraisal and Reinforcement LearningPredicting users' emotional states during interaction is a long-standing goal of affective computing. However, traditional methods based on sensory data alone fall short due to the interplay between users' latent cognitive states and emotional responses. To address this, we introduce a computational cognitive model that simulates emotion as a continuous process, rather than a static state, during interactive episodes. This model integrates cognitive-emotional appraisal mechanisms with computational rationality, utilizing value predictions from reinforcement learning. Experiments with human participants demonstrate the model's ability to predict and explain the emergence of emotions such as happiness, boredom, and irritation during interactions. Our approach opens the possibility of designing interactive systems that adapt to users' emotional states, thereby improving user experience and engagement. This work also deepens our understanding of the potential of modeling the relationship between reward processing, reinforcement learning, goal-directed behavior, and appraisal.2024JZJiayi Eurus Zhang et al.University of JyväskyläBrain-Computer Interface (BCI) & NeurofeedbackGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Visualization Perception & CognitionCHI
Participation Patterns of Interactive Playful Museum Exhibits: Evaluating the Participant Journey Map through Situated ObservationsThe Participant Journey Map (PJM) provides structured insight into participation with interactive play in (semi-)public environments. It supports understanding of participants’ behavior and was developed based on experiences with previously developed playful interfaces, related research and expert interviews. We apply the PJM to interactive playful museum exhibits and evaluate and refine it based on its usage in a situated context. We observed 672 play sessions with 6 interactive playful museum exhibits. The observation data was visualized and analyzed using the PJM. This study shows that the PJM provides a realistic representation of participant behaviour, can be used to identify stagnations and progressions in participation flow, and support identification of influencing design and contextual factors. With this paper we contribute by presenting the PJM as a well-grounded, valuable and realistic framework for evaluating and understanding participation with situated interactive play, based on post-hoc evaluation of multiple interfaces with many users.2023DMDanica Mast et al.Museum & Cultural Heritage DigitizationInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingDIS
A Novel Technique for Faster Responses to Take Over Requests in an Automated VehicleIn Level 3 automated vehicles, drivers must take back control when prompted by a Take Over Request (TOR). However, there is currently no consensus on the safest way to achieve this. Research has shown that participants interact faster with an avatar when this “glows” in synchrony with participant physiology (heartbeat). We hypothesized that a similar form of synchronization might allow drivers to react faster to a TOR. Using a driving simulator, we studied driver responses to a TOR when permanently visible ambient lighting was synchronized with participants’ breathing. Experimental participants responded to the TOR faster than controls. There were no significant effects on self-reported trust or physiological arousal, and none of the participants reported that they were aware of the manipulation. These findings suggest that new ways of keeping the driver unconsciously “connected” to the vehicle could facilitate faster, and potentially safer, transfers of control.2021FWFrancesco Walker et al.Automated Driving Interface & Takeover DesignAutoUI
Failing with Style: Designing for Aesthetic Failure in Interactive PerformanceFailure is a common artefact of challenging experiences, a fact of life for interactive systems but also a resource for aesthetic and improvisational performance. We present a study of how three professional pianists performed an interactive piano composition that included playing hidden codes within the music so as to control their path through the piece and trigger system actions. We reveal how apparent failures to play the codes occurred for diverse reasons including mistakes in their playing, limitations of the system, but also deliberate failures as a way of controlling the system, and how these failures provoked aesthetic and improvised responses from the performers. We propose that creative and performative interfaces should be designed to enable aesthetic failures and introduce a taxonomy that compares human approaches to failure with approaches to capable systems, revealing new creative design strategies of gaming, taming, riding and serving the system.2019AHAdrian Hazzard et al.University of NottinghamDigital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI