Drivers in negative emotional states, such as anger or sadness, are prone to perform bad at driving, decreasing overall road safety for all road users. Recent advances in affective computing, however, allow for the detection of such states and give us tools to tackle the connected problems within automotive user interfaces. We see potential in building a system which reacts upon possibly dangerous driver states and influences the driver in order to drive more safely. We compare different interaction approaches for an affective automotive interface, namely Ambient Light, Visual Notification, a Voice Assistant, and an Empathic Assistant. Results of a simulator study with 60 participants (30 each with induced sadness/anger) indicate that an emotional voice assistant with the ability to empathize with the user is the most promising approach as it improves negative states best and is rated most positively. Qualitative data also shows that users prefer an empathic assistant but also resent potential paternalism. This leads us to suggest that digital assistants are a valuable platform to improve driver emotions in automotive environments and thereby enable safer driving.

In this paper, we investigate the impact of avatar personalization on perceived emotions. Avatar embodiment is a crucial aspect of collaborative and social virtual reality (VR) systems. Previous research found that avatar appearance impacts the acceptability of the virtual body and changes users’ behavior. While virtual embodiment has been extensively investigated, we know very little about how embodiment affects users’ experienced emotions. In a user study (N = 40), we applied an autobiographical recall method to evoke happiness and investigated the influence of different types of avatar embodiment (personalized same-gender, personalized opposite-gender, non-personalized same-gender, and non-personalized opposite-gender) on participants’ perceived emotion. We recorded both self-reported assessments and physiological data to observe participants’ emotional responses resulting from the emotions elicited by the use of different avatars. We found significant differences in happiness with the personalized same-gender avatar and the personalized opposite-gender avatar. We provide empirical evidence, demonstrating the influence of avatar personalization on emotions in VR. We conclude with recommendations for users and designers of virtual reality experiences.

How can we design the user interfaces for augmented reality (AR) so that we can interact as simple, flexible and expressive as we can with smartphones in one hand? To explore this question, we propose PalmGazer as an interaction concept integrating eye-hand interaction to establish a singlehandedly operable menu system. In particular, PalmGazer is designed to support quick and spontaneous digital commands– such as to play a music track, check notifications or browse visual media – through our devised three-way interaction model: hand opening to summon the menu UI, eye-hand input for selection of items, and dragging gesture for navigation. A key aspect is that it remains always-accessible and movable to the user, as the menu supports meaningful hand and head based reference frames. We demonstrate the concept in practice through a prototypical mobile UI with application probes, and describe technique designs specifically-tailored to the application UI. A qualitative evaluation highlights the system’s interaction benefits and drawbacks, e.g., that common 2D scroll and selection tasks are simple to operate, but higher degrees of freedom may be reserved for two hands. Our work contributes interaction techniques and design insights to expand AR’s uni-manual capabilities.

The increasing number of smart devices installed in our homes poses privacy risks for inhabitants and visitors. However, individuals face difficulties counteracting privacy intrusions due to missing controls, incorrect mental models, and limitations in their level of expertise. We present PriKey, a concept for device-independent and easy-to-use tangible smart home privacy mechanisms. PriKey is the key to privacy protection: it supports users in taking control over their privacy through meaningful, tangible interactions. Using a Wizard-of-Oz prototype, we explored users’ perceptions regarding PriKey (N = 16). We then compared PriKey to an equivalent smartphone app (N = 32), focusing on visitors. Participants perceived PriKey as engaging, intuitive, and benevolent. Their privacy considerations were based on personal and contextual factors. While most participants preferred the smartphone app, others clearly favored PriKey. Our results indicate that tangible privacy is a noteworthy approach for future smart home privacy mechanisms.