Proxemic Interactions

In the everyday world, much of what we do as social beings is dictated by how we perceive and manage our interpersonal space. This is called proxemics. At its simplest, people naturally correlate physical distance to social distance. We believe that people’s expectations of proxemics can be exploited in interaction design to mediate their interactions with devices (phones, tablets, computers, appliances, large displays) contained within a small ubiquitous computing ecology. Just as people expect increasing engagement and intimacy as they approach others, so should they naturally expect increasing connectivity and interaction possibilities as they bring themselves and their devices in close proximity to one another. This is called Proxemic Interactions. This book concerns the design of proxemic interactions within such future proxemic-aware ecologies. It imagines a world of devices that have fine-grained knowledge of nearby people and other devices—how they move into range, their precise distance, their identity, and even their orientation—and how such knowledge can be exploited to design interaction techniques. The first part of this book concerns theory. After introducing proxemics, we operationalize proxemics for ubicomp interaction via the Proxemic Interactions framework that designers can use to mediate people’s interactions with digital devices. The framework, in part, identifies five key dimensions of proxemic measures (distance, orientation, movement, identity, and location) to consider when designing proxemic-aware ubicomp systems. The second part of this book applies this theory to practice via three case studies of proxemic-aware systems that react continuously to people’s and devices’ proxemic relationships. The case studies explore the application of proxemics in small-space ubicomp ecologies by considering first person-to-device, then device-to-device, and finally person-to-person and device-to-device proxemic relationships. We also offer a critical perspective on proxemic interactions in the form of “dark patterns,” where knowledge of proxemics may (and likely will) be easily exploited to the detriment of the user.

In the everyday world, much of what we do as social beings is dictated by how we perceive and manage our interpersonal space. This is called proxemics. At its simplest, people naturally correlate physical distance to social distance. We believe that people’s expectations of proxemics can be exploited in interaction design to mediate their interactions with devices (phones, tablets, computers, appliances, large displays) contained within a small ubiquitous computing ecology. Just as people expect increasing engagement and intimacy as they approach others, so should they naturally expect increasing connectivity and interaction possibilities as they bring themselves and their devices in close proximity to one another. This is called Proxemic Interactions. This book concerns the design of proxemic interactions within such future proxemic-aware ecologies. It imagines a world of devices that have fine-grained knowledge of nearby people and other devices—how they move into range, their precise distance, their identity, and even their orientation—and how such knowledge can be exploited to design interaction techniques. The first part of this book concerns theory. After introducing proxemics, we operationalize proxemics for ubicomp interaction via the Proxemic Interactions framework that designers can use to mediate people’s interactions with digital devices. The framework, in part, identifies five key dimensions of proxemic measures (distance, orientation, movement, identity, and location) to consider when designing proxemic-aware ubicomp systems. The second part of this book applies this theory to practice via three case studies of proxemic-aware systems that react continuously to people’s and devices’ proxemic relationships. The case studies explore the application of proxemics in small-space ubicomp ecologies by considering first person-to-device, then device-to-device, and finally person-to-person and device-to-device proxemic relationships. We also offer a critical perspective on proxemic interactions in the form of “dark patterns,” where knowledge of proxemics may (and likely will) be easily exploited to the detriment of the user. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments / Videos / Figure Credits / Introduction / Part I / Ubicomp in Brief / Proxemic Interactions Theory / Operationalizing Proxemics for Ubicomp Interaction / Exploiting Proxemics to Address Challenges in Ubicomp Ecologies / Part II: Exploiting Proxemics in Ubicomp Ecologies / Person/Person-to-Device Proxemic Interactions / Device-to-Device Proxemic Interactions / Considering Person-to-Person and Device-to-Device Proxemics / Dark Patterns / Conclusion / References / Author Biographies

Computing devices have become ever more present in our everyday environments, however embedding these technologies into our routines has remained a challenge. This book explores the novel theory of peripheral interaction to rectify this. This theory examines how interactive systems can be developed in such a way to allow people to seamlessly interact with their computer devices, but only focus on them at relevant times, building on the way in which people effortlessly divide their attention over several everyday activities in day to day life. Capturing the current state of the art within the field, this book explores the history and foundational theories of peripheral interaction, discusses novel interactive styles suitable for peripheral interaction, addresses different application domains which can benefit from peripheral interaction and presents visions of how these developments can have a positive impact on our future lives. As such, this book’s aim is to contribute to research and practice in fields such as human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing and Internet of Things, a view on how interactive technology could be redesigned to form a meaningful, yet unobtrusive part of people’s everyday lives. Peripheral Interaction will be highly beneficial to researchers and designers alike in areas such as HCI, Ergonomics and Interaction Design.

The 3-volume set LNCS 8510, 8511 and 8512 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2014, held in Heraklion, Crete, Greece in June 2014. The total of 1476 papers and 220 posters presented at the HCII 2014 conferences was carefully reviewed and selected from 4766 submissions. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The papers thoroughly cover the entire field of human-computer interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas.

The four-volume set LNCS 6946-6949 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, INTERACT 2011, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in September 2011. The 47 papers included in the first volume are organized in topical sections on accessibility, affective HCI, computer-mediated communication, computer-supported cooperative work, evaluation, finding and retrieving, fun/aesthetic design, gestures, and HCI in the classroom.

The five-volume set LNCS 12932-12936 constitutes the proceedings of the 18th IFIP TC 13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, INTERACT 2021, held in Bari, Italy, in August/September 2021. The total of 105 full papers presented together with 72 short papers and 70 other papers in these books was carefully reviewed and selected from 680 submissions. The contributions are organized in topical sections named: Part I: affective computing; assistive technology for cognition and neurodevelopment disorders; assistive technology for mobility and rehabilitation; assistive technology for visually impaired; augmented reality; computer supported cooperative work. Part II: COVID-19 & HCI; croudsourcing methods in HCI; design for automotive interfaces; design methods; designing for smart devices & IoT; designing for the elderly and accessibility; education and HCI; experiencing sound and music technologies; explainable AI. Part III: games and gamification; gesture interaction; human-centered AI; human-centered development of sustainable technology; human-robot interaction; information visualization; interactive design and cultural development. Part IV: interaction techniques; interaction with conversational agents; interaction with mobile devices; methods for user studies; personalization and recommender systems; social networks and social media; tangible interaction; usable security. Part V: user studies; virtual reality; courses; industrial experiences; interactive demos; panels; posters; workshops. The chapter ‘Stress Out: Translating Real-World Stressors into Audio-Visual Stress Cues in VR for Police Training’ is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. The chapter ‘WhatsApp in Politics?! Collaborative Tools Shifting Boundaries’ is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2013, held as part of the 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2013, held in Las Vegas, USA in July 2013, jointly with 12 other thematically similar conferences. The total of 1666 papers and 303 posters presented at the HCII 2013 conferences was carefully reviewed and selected from 5210 submissions. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of human-computer interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas. The total of 54 contributions was carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the DAPI proceedings. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: natural interaction; context-awareness in smart and intelligent environments; design and evaluation of smart and intelligent environments; smart cities; multi-user, group and collaborative interaction; smart everyday living and working environments.

The two-volume set LNCS 8935 and 8936 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, MMM 2015, held in Sydney, Australia, in January 2015. The 49 revised regular papers, 24 poster presentations, were carefully reviewed and selected from 189 submissions. For the three special session, a total of 18 papers were accepted for MMM 2015. The three special sessions are Personal (Big) Data Modeling for Information Access and Retrieval, Social Geo-Media Analytics and Retrieval and Image or video processing, semantic analysis and understanding. In addition, 9 demonstrations and 9 video showcase papers were accepted for MMM 2015. The accepted contributions included in these two volumes represent the state-of-the-art in multimedia modeling research and cover a diverse range of topics including: Image and Video Processing, Multimedia encoding and streaming, applications of multimedia modelling and 3D and augmented reality.