arXiv subjects

Sven Mayer

Publications and source records attributed to Sven Mayer.

28 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Usability and Adoption of Graphical Data-Driven Development Tools

Software development of modern, data-driven applications still relies on tools that use interaction paradigms that have remained mostly unchanged for decades. While rich forms of interactions exist as an alternative to textual command input, they find little adoption in professional software creation. In this work, we compare graphical programming using direct manipulation to the traditional, textual way of creating data-driven applications to determine the benefits and drawbacks of each. In a between-subjects user study (N=18), we compared developing a machine learning architecture with a graphical editor to traditional code-based development. While qualitative and quantitative measures show general benefits of graphical direct manipulation, the user's subjective perception does not always match this. Participants were aware of the possible benefits of such tools but were still biased in their perception. Our findings highlight that alternative software creation tools cannot just rely on good usability but must emphasize the demands of their specific target group, e.g. user control and flexibility, if they want long-term benefits and adoption.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

How Can Mixed Reality Benefit From Physiologically-Adaptive Systems? Challenges and Opportunities for Human Factors Applications

Mixed Reality (MR) allows users to interact with digital objects in a physical environment, but several limitations have hampered widespread adoption. Physiologically adaptive systems detecting user's states can drive interaction and address these limitations. Here, we highlight potential usability and interaction limitations in MR and how physiologically adaptive systems can benefit MR experiences and applications. We specifically address potential applications for human factors and operational settings such as healthcare, education, and entertainment. We further discuss benefits and applications in light of ethical and privacy concerns. The use of physiologically adaptive systems in MR has the potential to revolutionize human-computer interactions and provide users with a more personalized and engaging experience.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Leveraging Mobile Sensing Technology for Societal Change Towards more Sustainable Behavior

A pro-environmental attitude in the general population is essential to combat climate change. Society as a whole has the power to change economic processes through market demands and to exert pressure on policymakers - both are key social factors that currently undermine the goals of decarbonization. Creating long-lasting, sustainable attitudes is challenging and behavior change technologies do hard to overcome their limitations. Environmental psychology proposes social factors to be relevant, a.o. creating a global identity feeling and widening one's view beyond the own bubble. From our experience in the field of mobile sensing and psychometric data inferences, we see strong potential in mobile sensing technologies to implement the aforementioned goals. We present concrete ideas in this paper, aiming to refine and extend them with the workshop and evaluate them afterward.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Understanding the Uncertainty Loop of Human-Robot Interaction

Recently the field of Human-Robot Interaction gained popularity, due to the wide range of possibilities of how robots can support humans during daily tasks. One form of supportive robots are socially assistive robots which are specifically built for communicating with humans, e.g., as service robots or personal companions. As they understand humans through artificial intelligence, these robots will at some point make wrong assumptions about the humans' current state and give an unexpected response. In human-human conversations, unexpected responses happen frequently. However, it is currently unclear how such robots should act if they understand that the human did not expect their response, or even showing the uncertainty of their response in the first place. For this, we explore the different forms of potential uncertainties during human-robot conversations and how humanoids can, through verbal and non-verbal cues, communicate these uncertainties.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

The Impact of Expertise in the Loop for Exploring Machine Rationality

Human-in-the-loop optimization utilizes human expertise to guide machine optimizers iteratively and search for an optimal solution in a solution space. While prior empirical studies mainly investigated novices, we analyzed the impact of the levels of expertise on the outcome quality and corresponding subjective satisfaction. We conducted a study (N=60) in text, photo, and 3D mesh optimization contexts. We found that novices can achieve an expert level of quality performance, but participants with higher expertise led to more optimization iteration with more explicit preference while keeping satisfaction low. In contrast, novices were more easily satisfied and terminated faster. Therefore, we identified that experts seek more diverse outcomes while the machine reaches optimal results, and the observed behavior can be used as a performance indicator for human-in-the-loop system designers to improve underlying models. We inform future research to be cautious about the impact of user expertise when designing human-in-the-loop systems.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2022

A Survey of Augmented Piano Prototypes: Has Augmentation Improved Learning Experiences?

Humans have been developing and playing musical instruments for millennia. With technological advancements, instruments were becoming ever more sophisticated. In recent decades computer-supported innovations have also been introduced in hardware design, usability, and aesthetics. One of the most commonly digitally augmented instruments is the piano. Besides electronic keyboards, several prototypes augmenting pianos with different projections providing various levels of interactivity on and around the keyboard have been implemented in order to support piano players. However, it is still not understood if these solutions are indeed supporting the learning process. In this paper we present a systematic review of augmented piano prototypes focusing on instrument learning, which is based on the four themes derived from interviews of piano experts to better understand the problems of teaching the piano. These themes are: (i) synchronised movement and body posture, (ii) sight-reading, (iii) ensuring motivation, and (iv) encouraging improvisation. We found that prototypes are saturated on the synchronisation themes, and there are opportunities for sight-reading, motivation, and improvisation themes. We conclude by presenting recommendations on augmenting piano systems towards enriching the piano learning experience as well as on possible directions to expand knowledge in the area.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2022

Current Challenges of Using Wearable Devices for Online Emotion Sensing

A growing number of wearable devices is becoming increasingly non-invasive, readily available, and versatile for measuring different physiological signals. This renders them ideal for inferring the emotional states of their users. Despite the success of wearable devices in recent emotion studies, there are still several challenges to be addressed. In this position paper, we compare currently available wearables that can be used for emotion-sensing and identify the challenges and opportunities for future researchers. Our investigation opens the discussion of what is missing for in-the-wild for emotion-sensing studies.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2022

The Human in the Infinite Loop: A Case Study on Revealing and Explaining Human-AI Interaction Loop Failures

Interactive AI systems increasingly employ a human-in-the-loop strategy. This creates new challenges for the HCI community when designing such systems. We reveal and investigate some of these challenges in a case study with an industry partner, and developed a prototype human-in-the-loop system for preference-guided 3D model processing. Two 3D artists used it in their daily work for 3 months. We found that the human-AI loop often did not converge towards a satisfactory result and designed a lab study (N=20) to investigate this further. We analyze interaction data and user feedback through the lens of theories of human judgment to explain the observed human-in-the-loop failures with two key insights: 1) optimization using preferential choices lacks mechanisms to deal with inconsistent and contradictory human judgments; 2) machine outcomes, in turn, influence future user inputs via heuristic biases and loss aversion. To mitigate these problems, we propose descriptive UI design guidelines. Our case study draws attention to challenging and practically relevant imperfections in human-AI loops that need to be considered when designing human-in-the-loop systems.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2022

The Vision of a Human-Centered Piano

For around 300 years, humans have been learning to play the modern piano either with a teacher or on their own. In recent years teaching and learning have been enhanced using augmented technologies that support novices. Other technologies have also tried to improve different use cases with the piano, such as composing and performing. Researchers and practitioners have showcased several forms of augmentation, from hardware improvements, sound quality, rendering projected visualizations to gesture-based and immersive technologies. Today, the landscape of piano augmentations is very diverse, and it is unclear how to describe the ideal piano and its features. In this work, we discuss how the human-centered piano -- the piano that has been designed with humans in the center of the design process and that effectively supports tasks performed on it -- can support pianists. In detail, we present the three tasks of learning, composing, and improvising in which a human-centered piano would be beneficial for the pianist.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

Neural Photofit: Gaze-based Mental Image Reconstruction

We propose a novel method that leverages human fixations to visually decode the image a person has in mind into a photofit (facial composite). Our method combines three neural networks: An encoder, a scoring network, and a decoder. The encoder extracts image features and predicts a neural activation map for each face looked at by a human observer. A neural scoring network compares the human and neural attention and predicts a relevance score for each extracted image feature. Finally, image features are aggregated into a single feature vector as a linear combination of all features weighted by relevance which a decoder decodes into the final photofit. We train the neural scoring network on a novel dataset containing gaze data of 19 participants looking at collages of synthetic faces. We show that our method significantly outperforms a mean baseline predictor and report on a human study that shows that we can decode photofits that are visually plausible and close to the observer's mental image.

cs.CV↗