Clarity and ease of interaction are critical for mobile devices that users rely on daily. As smartphone use time rises, manufacturers are exploring e-paper displays for their advantages, including longer battery life and reduced eye strain. Yet, e-paper technology comes with inherent design limitations, such as reduced responsiveness, constrained color ranges, and ghosting. To address these limitations, we present the first version of our E-Paper Design System comprising a set of design components and guidelines developed specifically for e-paper smartphones, with a particular focus on minimalist devices. The E-Paper Design System is released as a free, open resource on Zeroheight and documented in the Appendix for reference. Our design decisions are grounded in technical constraints, prior research and insights from designers and developers using this pilot version of the design system to create custom mobile applications. We also report findings from an exploratory in-house UX study (N=24) testing developed applications, highlight remaining e-paper-specific design challenges and outline future research directions.

This article presents the results of a qualitative study on older adults’ first impressions of the ChatGPT 4.0 voice interface in the Polish language. We organized three exploratory workshops with older adult volunteers (N = 13), during which we inquired about their expectations and observed their first actual use of a fluent conversational voice interface in Polish. Based on thematic analysis of acquired data we classified recurring themes, impressions, aspirations and opportunities for improvement. In this exploratory work we formulate a list of nine preliminary insights to consider when designing voice interaction systems for older adults using large language models. Our study serves as a unique snapshot of a non-English-speaking population’s first interaction with a fluent, non-rule-based voice assistant in their native language, and forms a valuable baseline for future work in Human–AI interaction.

This article explores the social and psychological factors that influence user interactions with smart energy management systems (SEMSs). Modern life is becoming more closely interlinked with the use of modern technology, and electricity demand management systems exemplify this. The energy production, distribution, and consumption system is becoming increasingly complex, and energy consumers are becoming active participants in it-both as prosumers and as consumers determining their energy demand. This article also describes this transformation of the individual energy consumer's role, highlighting the importance of the social dimensions that influence their acceptance and involvement in the use of SEMSs. Based on social research conducted in two European projects that assessed user engagement with SEMSs, we identified trust, knowledge, sense of control, and values as relevant factors influencing user engagement with this new smart environment. The analysis reveals key roles for energy knowledge, environmental awareness, well-designed user interfaces, and incentive mechanisms that motivate users in ways that reach beyond financial incentives. Based on these insights, we advocate a holistic approach to the design and implementation of SEMSs, where users' needs and capabilities are considered throughout the design process.

We report preliminary insights from an exploratory study on non-standard non-invasive interfaces for Smart Home Technologies (SHT). This study is part of a broader research project on effective Smart Home ecosystem Sagacity that will target older adults, impaired persons, and other groups disadvantaged in the main technology discourse. Therefore, this research is in line with a long-term research framework of the HASE research group (Human Aspects in Science and Engineering) by the Living Lab Kobo. In our study, based on the prototype of the comprehensive SHT management system Sagacity, we investigated the potential of bioelectric signals, in particular EMG and EOG as a complementary interface for SHT. Based on our previous participatory research and studies on multimodal interfaces, including VUI and BCI, we prepared an in-depth interactive hands-on experience workshops with direct involvement of various groups of potential end users, including older adults and impaired persons (total 18 subjects) to explore and investigate the potential of solutions based on this type of non-standard interfaces. The preliminary insights from the study unveil the potential of EMG/EOG interfaces in multimodal SHT management, alongside limitations and challenges stemming from the current state of technology and recommendations for designing multimodal interaction paradigms pinpointing areas of interest to pursue in further studies.

In this expert panel we explore the evolving role of generative AI in creative and analytical domains. Through a workshop involving students we examined how new AI tools influence design processes and whether they could replace human expertise. Beyond creative applications, we trained and tested an AI model for behavioral analysis of free-ranging wild mice, achieving high accuracy in species classification and movement tracking. Additionally, we discuss AI's role in everyday applications, including smart home control. While AI enhances efficiency, concerns about automation replacing creative professionals remain. We argue that AI is most valuable as an assistant, augmenting human capabilities rather than supplanting them.

As humanity pushes the boundaries of space exploration, human factors research becomes more important. Human factors encompass a broad spectrum of psychological, physiological, and ergonomic factors that affect human performance, well-being, and safety in the unique and challenging space environment. This panel explores the multifaceted field of human factors in space exploration and highlights the opportunities that lie in fostering international and interdisciplinary cooperation. This exploration delves into the current state of research on human factors in space missions, addressing the physiological and psychological challenges astronauts face during long space flights. It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, combining knowledge from fields such as psychology, medicine, engineering, and design to address the complex interaction of factors affecting human performance and adaptation to the space environment

This study addresses the issue of procrastination in home-based virtual reality (VR) physical exercise. A total of n = 52 participants who owned Oculus Quest 2 headsets were involved in the study. The participants were tasked with completing six fifteen-minute High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) sessions within fourteen days, with three training sessions to be completed within the first seven days. The participants were allowed to schedule the sessions themselves. First we measured the participants' average physical training performance using our custom VR application. Next we calculated the average interval between individual training sessions and categorized the participants into two groups. Those inclined to cluster their training sessions daily were assigned to the block training group, while those whose sessions were distributed more evenly were assigned to the distributed training group. Our findings suggest that procrastination leads to poorer performance during training sessions in a VR environment. Individuals in the block training group demonstrated significantly lower average training performance than those in the distributed training group.

As an increasing number of academic conferences transition to the online sphere, new event paradigms must be explored and developed to better utilise the unique multimedia opportunities offered by the virtual world. With this in mind, we conducted in-depth interviews with researchers, performed a SWOT analysis of remote conferences, and developed experimental conference functionalities. We implemented these during the 9th edition of a two-day international scientific IT conference, which was attended by over 277 participants on the first day and 199 on the second. In this article, we describe how these innovative functionalities met the participants' needs based on qualitative and quantitative data. We present how the experiences of remote and in-person events differ, and offer recommendations on organising remote conferences that encourage participants to exchange knowledge and engage in activities.

The efficient use of intermittent renewable energy requires the development of solutions that provide demand-side flexibility. A promising area is the use of electric car batteries as a buffer for the electricity grid. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology enables cars' charging intensities to be matched to the immediate availability of energy, and energy to be drawn from their batteries when grid power is scarce. The technology is already technically mature; however, the public's acceptance of such solutions has yet to be explored. This study adds to the knowledge on user attitudes to vehicle-to-grid charging. Nine qualitative interviews were conducted with electric car users in Spain in 2022. The results reveal that due to the relatively short range of electric cars and their long charging times, users' primary concern is to ensure that their vehicles' batteries are charged as much as possible. V2G technology increases the sense of uncertainty in this key dimension. Acceptance for V2G technology can be enhanced by the adaption of a charging algorithm to ensure that flexible charging does not increase users' anxiety. The communication must emphasise the individual and social benefits, rather than the fact that vehicles can remain uncharged in some situations.

We propose a one-day transdisciplinary workshop in the broad area of HCI focused on co-designing immersive virtual reality (IVR) for remote and unsupervised interaction, intervention, training and research. The development and deployment of such systems is a significant and important challenge. While remote and unsupervised systems are more accessible to a wider user-base, their design, implementation and deployment poses unique challenges, related to the need to involve truly transdisciplinary design teams, co-designing solutions with users, providing step-by-step interaction scenarios, and retaining user motivation and engagement over longer periods of time. Moreover, there are multiple ethical considerations related to both the inclusivity and accessibility of such systems and the security of data collected. Therefore, to facilitate the use of IVR systems in various contexts, ranging from unique interactions and research, through psychological interventions, to education and training, we propose to formulate a set of best practices. Taking into account the diverse aspects involved, we will formulate actionable guidelines for co-designing such solutions with users based on review of extant literature, expert knowledge, case studies and insights from the workshop.

As virtual reality (VR) technology becomes more pervasive, it continues to find multiple new uses beyond research laboratories. One of them is distance adult education—the potential of VR to provide valuable education experiences is massive, despite the current barriers to its widespread application. Nevertheless, recent trends demonstrate clearly that VR is on the rise in education settings, and VR-only courses are becoming more popular across the globe. This trend will continue as more affordable VR solutions are released commercially, increasing the number of education institutions that benefit from the technology. No accessibility guidelines exist at present that are created specifically for the design, development, and use of VR hardware and software in distance education. The purpose of this workshop is to address this niche. It gathers researchers and practitioners who are interested in education and intend to work together to formulate a set of practical guidelines for the use of VR in distance adult education to make it accessible to a wider range of people.

This paper describes the psycho-social consequences of using voice assistants, based on a new look at the concept of the interface as a tool that allows the use of another tool. In analysing the history of interfaces and considering them in terms of naturalness (ease of use) and transparency (visibility and understandability to the user), it can be seen that they evolved in the direction of unnaturalness for a long time, but have again recently become more natural. One of the newest stages of this process are voice assistants. The popularization of them has significant potential to strengthen the competence and abilities of a human being. The barriers of technical ability will be weakened, and abilities and possibilities based on access to instant information will be strengthened. A user will become a super-empowered individual. At the same time, the new type of interface will gain new, unprecedented features. The price that was paid for making the technology natural is its extreme non-transparency (its obscurity, complexity and convoluted nature). It is to be expected that the amount of information about a user that an interface has will be growing. It will start a far-reaching asymmetry – where the interface is trained on a neural network and has the knowledge about millions of users at its disposal; it will know how to make is so that a particular user chooses what is in the interest of interface owner or to undertake a desired kind of action. In the modern world knowledge translates into power, and this will be the first time in history that we will be faced with a situation in which an apparatus standing behind an interface may gain an advantage over a user on such a scale. The non-transparency of this interface will cause users to understand their tool less and less, and in extreme cases the asymmetry in the relations may go so far that it will lead to a reversal of the tool-user relation. It will be a human being who is the tool used to attain a particular aim, a means to an end; the human being may become an extension of technology. A simple example is that of road traffic control in cities – an application showing traffic density and navigating to destination. A driver relies here on information received by the system. He has to trust that a certain road is the most effective. It is enough for the application to have a different aim (e.g. directing the traffic so there are no accidents) for the user’s aim (get somewhere as fast as possible) and that of the application owner to have diverged, and that the human being has become a tool in helping the system achieve the aim. Thus, this situation serve as yet another example of Postman’s “invisible technology’’ , something that we do not see, and which is supposed to be neutral by definition. However, as Martin Heidegger noted, many technologies have the greatest impact on us when they are perceived as neutral.

This paper discusses the relationship between movement and mental and cognitive function, as well as the potential for it to be utilized by new technologies. The first section of the paper presents the cerebral mechanisms responsible for associating physical with mental activity, and discusses examples of this influence on cognitive and emotional processes, as well as learning. The second section focuses on physical activity as an element of human interaction with a computer, including, but not limited to, so-called “exergames”. The subject of physical activity and cognitive functions is presented in the final section of the paper from the perspective of immersive virtual reality technology – a tool which appears to be highly compelling. Virtual reality seems uniquely suited to research on the relationship between movement and cognitive function.

This book shows what can be learned from movements of the human body, from face, hand, leg, and foot to the whole body movement

This article presents the results of a quantitative survey conducted on 4000 electric energy consumers in Spain, France, Italy, and Denmark. The results demonstrate differences in the effects of additional remuneration for using vehicle-to-grid (V2G) stations, depending on users' reasons for saving electricity. Individuals with extrinsic financial motivations are sensitive to such incentives; the higher the remuneration is, the more willingness they demonstrate to use V2G. Although individuals with intrinsic (the desire to control spending) and ecological (caring for the environment) motivations are also interested in using V2G, no relationship can be observed between the sizes of the rewards and individuals' desire to use the technology. Users are similarly encouraged by low (an extra 2.5% of energy for free) and high (an extra 20%) rewards. In contrast, individuals who display intrinsic general modesty (willingness to not waste things) motivations may even be discouraged: the higher the reward, the less interest they demonstrate in V2G. The article illustrates how different types of motivation can affect users' interest in the innovative V2G concept, as well as underlining the importance of constructing intrinsic and altruistic motivations in the process of education.

Using advanced graphic effects in video messages can be an effective tool to enhance a message through more realistic presentation. However, according to Cognitive Load Theory, it may come at the cost of greater effort and extraneous cognitive load generated by the manner in which information is presented. In this paper we determine the cognitive costs of processing instructional material (disaster risk communication) using eye tracking indicators. Our results reveal that enriching instructional material with 3D visual effects increases the number of fixations, as well as shortens fixation duration. These oculomotor responses reflect an increased cognitive load, which is correlated with poorer knowledge regarding the presented material. We discuss the obtained results from the practical perspective, providing insights into effective means of disaster risk communication.

Removing the language barrier could bring great benefits not only to the scientific community. Therefore, it is necessary to strive to improve both the tools and procedures in which these tools are used, to ensure a reliable exchange of knowledge. The authors try to find out whether the existing and widely available technology (Google Translate) contributes to the facilitation of knowledge sharing among scientists. Humanity has been trying to construct and improve the technology of universal real-time translation for a long time. For many, it was inspired by scifi works, in which, probably, this idea appeared already in the 1940s (see Leinster's "First contact"). This is an important topic because the language of science has long since become English, and for most of the scientific community it is not the mother tongue. Furthermore, we are now talking about the English languages of the world, or "world Englishes", not to mention those who say "the language of science is bad English". The paper tells a story which on the one hand constitutes a thoughtful anecdote, on the other may offer a good introduction to a serious scientific study. As it stands now, the main argument for including it is the story itself, with which we encourage further studies to scale our ideas in terms of a broader sample and comparability.

This chapter explores human–computer interaction involving the feet and legs. It begins with a concise description of the anatomy of the feet; next, it presents the elements of non-verbal communication that affect foot position and movement, as well as how the feet relate to aspects of human psychology. Both the anatomy of the feet and their connection to psychological functioning dictate how computer system designers involve them in interactions. The second half of the chapter outlines technological solutions that utilize the feet as a means of interaction with computers. It presents examples of indirect interfaces in which the feet are used to move various types of manipulator, such as pedals. It also presents direct interfaces based on sensors installed inside shoes—for instance, in soles or insoles. The final section discusses environmental sensors, such as sensing floors, which detect foot positions without the need to install special detectors or external controllers.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a sudden increase of remote activities including work, learning and also scientific conferences. Almost a year of experience in remote work, remote meetings and remote conferences clearly showed that these events are markedly different from their traditional counterparts. The aim of this workshop is to analyse factors influencing the user experience of remote conferences, thereby creating a set of guidelines for their future organizers. Patterns may be identified from personal experiences shared by HCI researchers as participants or organizers of remote conferences. Methodologically, the methods of Design Thinking combined with the auto-ethnographic approach will be employed for the workshop. Participants will be able to find new insights into the process of the organization of remote conferences and transform such insights into an actionable set of guidelines for future remote conference organization.

This chapter discusses whole-body movement in the context of human–computer interaction. The first part focuses on the recognition and classification of body movements with the use of motion capture systems and video signal analysis. It also presents practical applications, such as automatic recognition of sign language and identification of individuals. The second half of the chapter reflects on the use of body movement as a method of interaction with computers and machines. Remote operation is discussed, including drone control. The chapter concludes with examples of new whole-body interaction paradigms.