arXiv subjects

Michael Rietzler

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Rietzler.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Investigating the Effects of Eco-Friendly Service Options on Rebound Behavior in Ride-Hailing

Eco-friendly service options (EFSOs) aim to reduce personal carbon emissions, yet their eco-friendly framing may permit increased consumption, weakening their intended impact. Such rebound effects remain underexamined in HCI, including how common eco-feedback approaches shape them. We investigate this in an online within-subjects experiment (N=75) in a ride-hailing context. Participants completed 10 trials for five conditions (No EFSO, EFSO - Minimal, EFSO - CO2 Equivalency, EFSO - Gamified, EFSO - Social), yielding 50 choices between walking and ride-hailing for trips ranging from 0.5mi - 2.0mi (0.80km - 3.22km). We measured how different EFSO variants affected ride-hailing uptake relative to a No EFSO baseline. EFSOs lacking explicit eco-feedback metrics increased ride-hailing uptake, and qualitative responses indicate that EFSOs can make convenience-driven choices more permissible. We conclude with implications for designing EFSOs that begin to take rebound effects into account.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Mind Games! Exploring the Impact of Dark Patterns in Mixed Reality Scenarios

Mixed Reality (MR) integrates virtual objects with the real world, offering potential but raising concerns about misuse through dark patterns. This study explored the effects of four dark patterns, adapted from prior research, and applied to MR across three targets: places, products, and people. In a two-factorial within-subject study with 74 participants, we analyzed 13 videos simulating MR experiences during a city walk. Results show that all dark patterns significantly reduced user comfort, increased reactance, and decreased the intention to use MR glasses, with the most disruptive effects linked to personal or monetary manipulation. Additionally, the dark patterns of Emotional and Sensory Manipulation and Hiding Information produced similar impacts on the user in MR, suggesting a re-evaluation of current classifications to go beyond deceptive design techniques. Our findings highlight the importance of developing ethical design guidelines and tools to detect and prevent dark patterns as immersive technologies continue to evolve.

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arXiv2025

Describe Me Something You Do Not Remember - Challenges and Risks of Exposure Design Using Generative Artificial Intelligence for Therapy of Complex Post-traumatic Disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with sudden, uncontrollable, and intense flashbacks of traumatic memories. Trauma exposure psychotherapy has proven effective in reducing the severity of trauma-related symptoms. It involves controlled recall of traumatic memories to train coping mechanisms for flashbacks and enable autobiographical integration of distressing experiences. In particular, exposure to visualizations of these memories supports successful recall. Although this approach is effective for various trauma types, it remains available for only a few. This is due to the lack of cost-efficient solutions for creating individualized exposure visualizations. This issue is particularly relevant for the treatment of Complex PTSD (CPTSD), where traumatic memories are highly individual and generic visualizations do not meet therapeutic needs. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) offers a flexible and cost-effective alternative. GAI enables the creation of individualized exposure visualizations during therapy and, for the first time, allows patients to actively participate in the visualization process. While GAI opens new therapeutic perspectives and may improve access to trauma therapy, especially for CPTSD, it also introduces significant challenges and risks. The extreme uncertainty and lack of control that define both CPTSD and GAI raise concerns about feasibility and safety. To support safe and effective three-way communication, it is essential to understand the roles of patient, system, and therapist in exposure visualization and how each can contribute to safety. This paper outlines perspectives, challenges, and risks associated with the use of GAI in trauma therapy, with a focus on CPTSD.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

When Do We Feel Present in a Virtual Reality? Towards Sensitivity and User Acceptance of Presence Questionnaires

Presence is an important and widely used metric to measure the quality of virtual reality (VR) applications. Given the multifaceted and subjective nature of presence, the most common measures for presence are questionnaires. But there is little research on their validity regarding specific presence dimensions and their responsiveness to differences in perception among users. We investigated four presence questionnaires (SUS, PQ, IPQ, Bouchard) on their responsiveness to intensity variations of known presence dimensions and asked users about their consistency with their experience. Therefore, we created five VR scenarios that were designed to emphasize a specific presence dimension. Our findings showed heterogeneous sensitivity of the questionnaires dependent on the different dimensions of presence. This highlights a context-specific suitability of presence questionnaires. The questionnaires' sensitivity was further stated as lower than actually perceived. Based on our findings, we offer guidance on selecting these questionnaires based on their suitability for particular use cases.

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arXiv2025

Light My Way: Developing and Exploring a Multimodal Interface to Assist People With Visual Impairments to Exit Highly Automated Vehicles

The introduction of Highly Automated Vehicles (HAVs) has the potential to increase the independence of blind and visually impaired people (BVIPs). However, ensuring safety and situation awareness when exiting these vehicles in unfamiliar environments remains challenging. To address this, we conducted an interactive workshop with N=5 BVIPs to identify their information needs when exiting an HAV and evaluated three prior-developed low-fidelity prototypes. The insights from this workshop guided the development of PathFinder, a multimodal interface combining visual, auditory, and tactile modalities tailored to BVIP's unique needs. In a three-factorial within-between-subject study with N=16 BVIPs, we evaluated PathFinder against an auditory-only baseline in urban and rural scenarios. PathFinder significantly reduced mental demand and maintained high perceived safety in both scenarios, while the auditory baseline led to lower perceived safety in the urban scenario compared to the rural one. Qualitative feedback further supported PathFinder's effectiveness in providing spatial orientation during exiting.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

PlantPal: Leveraging Precision Agriculture Robots to Facilitate Remote Engagement in Urban Gardening

Urban gardening is widely recognized for its numerous health and environmental benefits. However, the lack of suitable garden spaces, demanding daily schedules and limited gardening expertise present major roadblocks for citizens looking to engage in urban gardening. While prior research has explored smart home solutions to support urban gardeners, these approaches currently do not fully address these practical barriers. In this paper, we present PlantPal, a system that enables the cultivation of garden spaces irrespective of one's location, expertise level, or time constraints. PlantPal enables the shared operation of a precision agriculture robot (PAR) that is equipped with garden tools and a multi-camera system. Insights from a 3-week deployment (N=18) indicate that PlantPal facilitated the integration of gardening tasks into daily routines, fostered a sense of connection with one's field, and provided an engaging experience despite the remote setting. We contribute design considerations for future robot-assisted urban gardening concepts.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Scrolling in the Deep: Analysing Contextual Influences on Intervention Effectiveness during Infinite Scrolling on Social Media

Infinite scrolling on social media platforms is designed to encourage prolonged engagement, leading users to spend more time than desired, which can provoke negative emotions. Interventions to mitigate infinite scrolling have shown initial success, yet users become desensitized due to the lack of contextual relevance. Understanding how contextual factors influence intervention effectiveness remains underexplored. We conducted a 7-day user study (N=72) investigating how these contextual factors affect users' reactance and responsiveness to interventions during infinite scrolling. Our study revealed an interplay, with contextual factors such as being at home, sleepiness, and valence playing significant roles in the intervention's effectiveness. Low valence coupled with being at home slows down the responsiveness to interventions, and sleepiness lowers reactance towards interventions, increasing user acceptance of the intervention. Overall, our work contributes to a deeper understanding of user responses toward interventions and paves the way for developing more effective interventions during infinite scrolling.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Balancing the Digital and the Physical: Discussing Push and Pull Factors for Digital Well-being

This position paper discusses the negative effects of excessive smartphone usage on mental health and well-being. Despite efforts to limit smartphone usage, users become desensitized to reminders and limitations. The paper proposes the use of Push & Pull Factors to contextualize intervention strategies promoting digital well-being. Further, alternative metrics to measure the effectiveness of intervention strategies will be discussed.

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arXiv2021

Augmenting Teleportation in Virtual Reality With Discrete Rotation Angles

Locomotion is one of the most essential interaction tasks in virtual reality (VR) with teleportation being widely accepted as the state-of-the-art locomotion technique at the time of this writing. A major draw-back of teleportation is the accompanying physical rotation that is necessary to adjust the users' orientation either before or after teleportation. This is a limiting factor for tethered head-mounted displays (HMDs) and static body postures and can induce additional simulator sickness for HMDs with three degrees-of-freedom (DOF) due to missing parallax cues. To avoid physical rotation, previous work proposed discrete rotation at fixed intervals (InPlace) as a controller-based technique with low simulator sickness, yet the impact of varying intervals on spatial disorientation, user presence and performance remains to be explored. An unevaluated technique found in commercial VR games is reorientation during the teleportation process (TeleTurn), which prevents physical rotation but potentially increases interaction time due to its continuous orientation selection. In an exploratory user study, where participants were free to apply both techniques, we evaluated the impact of rotation parameters of either technique on user performance and preference. Our results indicate that discrete InPlace rotation introduced no significant spatial disorientation, while user presence scores were increased. Discrete TeleTurn and teleportation without rotation was ranked higher and achieved a higher presence score than continuous TeleTurn, which is the current state-of-the-art found in VR games. Based on observations, that participants avoided TeleTurn rotation when discrete InPlace rotation was available, we distilled guidelines for designing teleportation without physical rotation.

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arXiv2021

Questionnaires and Qualitative Feedback Methods to Measure User Experience in Mixed Reality

Evaluating the user experience of a software system is an essential final step of every research. Several concepts such as flow, affective state, presences, or immersion exist to measure user experience. Typical measurement techniques analyze physiological data, gameplay data, and questionnaires. Qualitative feedback methods are another approach to collect detailed user insights. In this position paper, we will discuss how we used questionnaires and qualitative feedback methods in previous mixed reality work to measure user experience. We will present several measurement examples, discuss their current limitations, and provide guideline propositions to support comparable mixed reality user experience research in the future.

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