Category: News

The “Sunday Blues”: a qualitative exploration of manifestations, contributing factors, and coping strategies among employees

By Zhouchao Peng et al.

… The findings revealed that the “Sunday Blues” is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon characterized by emotional, physical, cognitive, and behavioral manifestations, including anxiety, stress, fatigue, rumination, procrastination, and social withdrawal. Three categories of influencing factors emerged: triggers, such as unfulfilled weekend expectations and anticipated challenges at work; aggravators, such as work-life imbalance and job instability; and mitigators, such as autonomy and enthusiasm for ongoing work. Participants also described a wide range of coping strategies, including self-reward, intentional weekend planning, reducing upcoming demands, and resilience-building practices. The study clarifies the “Sunday Blues” as a multidimensional weekend-to-workweek transition experience that may be oriented both retrospectively toward the ending weekend and prospectively toward the approaching workweek. By organizing its manifestations, contributing factors, and coping strategies, the findings provide a conceptual foundation for future empirical research and intervention development.

Shi Qiu et al.

Incorporating social interaction and cognitive stimulation into balance training can motivate older adults to engage more actively and consistently. We developed Balance Bird, an exergame designed to enhance physical, social, and cognitive activity for older adults. Thirty-six participants (18 older adults and 18 university students) were tested in pairs across three game modes featuring different types of bodily interaction and cognitive tasks: (1) the Single-Balance Ball Game (SBBG), where older players complete cognitive tasks independently; (2) the Dual-Balance Ball Game (DBBG), where older and younger players use lower limbs as input and complete cognitive tasks together; and (3) the Gesture-Balance Ball Game (GBBG), where older participants use gestures while younger ones use lower limbs to complete tasks. Our main findings revealed that all participants scored significantly higher in game competence in the GBBG compared to the SBBG. However, they experienced significantly less flow in the GBBG than in the DBBG. Female participants reported higher user experience and lower negative affect compared to males. Older participants also reported a better user experience overall, despite perceiving more challenges. In this study, we contribute empirical evidence that Balance Bird positively impacts physical, social and cognitive health for older adults.

Qianhui Wei et al.

The main contributions of this paper are:
* We propose a generation method of Mediated Social Touch (MST) signals on smartphones, involving frequency, duration, and compound waveform compositions.
* We introduce a mapping function that translates MST gesture pressure into MST signal intensity by linking pressure values to signal frequency.
* We present a set of MST signals specifically designed for smartphones.
* We provide design insights and recommendations for applying MST signals in future smartphone-based social communication scenarios.

Qianhui Wei, Min Li, Jun Hu

Background: Mediated social touch has been widely studied for remote affective communication in the field of human-computer interaction. Goal: We conducted this literature review to comprehensively understand the state of the art of the designs and evaluations of mediated social touch for mobile devices. Method: We selected 52 articles based on related keywords from four main digital libraries, i.e., ACM, IEEE, Springer, and Scopus. Results: We summarized from these articles how mediated social touch signal is designed, prototyped, and evaluated, and what the main research findings are. Based on the analysis, we identified opportunities for later work.

Shuo Li et al.

Researcher has been trying to optimize the method for evaluating presence in virtual reality (VR) to address variability and uncertainty in quick evaluations using questionnaires. We recommend using the Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) model to calculate the iGroup Presence Questionnaire to measure users’ overall presence in VR prototyping, instead of the weighted sum approach. The effects of two presence factors (scene density and motion trajectory technology) on a self-developed VR swimming virtual system were tested using the TOPSIS model with 20 participants each 12 tasks in a user experiment. The results were compared using two different weighting methods, fuzzy hierarchical analysis and uniform weighting methods. TOPSIS had a narrower range of data within the 95% confidence interval and a significantly lower coefficient of variation (CV). This indicates enhanced precision in evaluating presence and can be used to compare different technique setting of virtual systems.

Together with our former PhDs, we were invited by a top Chinese design journal (Zhuangshi) to share our view on Dutch Design Engineering Science, with examples of our Dutch Design Week entries over the years, from the perspective of design research on social computing. The link is a Google-translated version of the article shared by the journal on WeChat.

The same issue features articles about Dutch design by J.W. Drukker, Herman van Bergeijk, and colleagues from TU Delft. 

WeChat post by the journal; and see also a Google translated version.

Jing Li, Emilia Barakova, Jun Hu, Wouter Staal & Martine van Dongen-Boomsma

See also the related Patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/NL2029559B1/en?oq=NL2029559B1

Children with Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience high levels of anxiety and stress. Many children with ASD have difficulty in being aware of their stress and communicating distress to family and caregivers. Stress detection and regulation are vital for their mental well-being. This paper presents a stress-aware pen (ApEn) that detects real-time stress-related behaviors and interacts with users with vibrotactile and light as a feedback indication of interpreted stress levels. ApEn is a context-aware tool for collecting behavioral data related to the expression of stress and can increase users’ stress awareness. A pilot test was conducted with typical developed children to investigate how to detect stress in their daily environment. The pilot test results indicate that ApEn is a promising tool for detecting stress-related behaviors and can attend the user about the detected stress through designed sensory feedback.

Mengru Xue, Pengcheng An, Rong-Hao Liang, Zengrong Guo, Jun Hu, Preben Hansen,
Loe Feijs

Collective stress is the stress within a group or an organization. It affects individuals’ well-being and group productivity. HCI research has started exploring collective stress visualization to facilitate group awareness and collective coping via testing prototypes in controlled settings. However, an in-depth understanding of users’ needs and envisaged scenarios based on their authentic experiences are still lacking. In this study, we utilized a participatory approach called co-constructing stories to investigate how a collective stress visualization would be used in office workers’ authentic workday routines. We constructed use case stories with a group of office workers separately based on their personal lived experiences, using a design probe called AffectiveGarden. Our results categorized six clusters of benefits for collective coping through visualization and their implications for future design practice.

Shi Qiu, Jun Hu, Ting Han &Matthias Rauterberg

During the design, it is important to evaluate the user experience of representative users in many human product interactions. But, in some cases, it is difficult or even impossible to recruit representative users because they have disabilities that do not allow them to take part in such investigations. Thus, alternative populations are widely studied. The most common way to replace real blind people is to use sighted but blindfolded users when studying design solutions. To test whether such alternative or proxy users can be used to represent blind people in social interactions, we examined the communication quality of 20 blind-sighted pairs and 20 blindfolded-sighted pairs in two different experiments. A prototype named E-Gaze glasses was evaluated as the testing tool. Results clearly show that the blindfolded participants achieved significantly higher communication quality than the blind participants. In qualitative data analysis, the blindfolded participants also reported their user experience of being blindfolded in conversations. Our qualitative results strengthen the conclusion that blindfolded users’ behaviour is different from real blind users’ behaviour. We recommend that blind users should not be substituted for blindfolded users in human product evaluations when communication quality is measured.

The number of older adults residing in nursing institutions is increasing, and many of them experience social isolation. The social interaction of older adults constitutes a complex system that involves multiple stakeholders, including fellow residents, caregivers, members of the local community, etc. This paper proposes an Interactive Gallery, comprising a cluster of scenery collectors and an interactive installation resembling a gallery. It aims to promote social interaction among nursing home residents and members of the local community, as well as between senior residents within the nursing home. We conducted a field study that employed behavior observation and semi-structured interviews. Our findings show that the Interactive Gallery had a positive impact on the social interaction of senior participants, and it also stimulated their interest in sharing their experiences with individuals outside of the nursing home. The implications of our field study are significant. We highlight the social interaction system and behavioral characteristics of senior residents, strategies for enhancing social interaction within the nursing home, and strategies for promoting social interaction between senior residents and members of the local community. The Interactive Gallery presents a novel approach to addressing the issue of social isolation among senior residents in nursing homes. Our field study findings demonstrate its potential to improve the quality of life of seniors by promoting social interaction and engagement.