Harassment in Social Virtual Reality (SVR) is a growing concern. The current SVR landscape features inconsistent access to non-standardised safety features, with minimal empirical evidence on their real-world effectiveness, usage and impact. We examine the use effectiveness of tools across 12 popular platforms by surveying 100 users about experiences different types harassment like muting, blocking, personal spaces gestures. While remained common-including hate speech, virtual stalking,...

Cyclists encounter drivers in many traffic scenarios; good communication is key to avoiding collisions. Little known about everyday driver-cyclist interaction and communication. This important designing Automated Vehicles (AVs) that must drive safely around cyclists. We explored across diverse scenarios through in-the-wild observations (N = 414) a naturalistic study involving cyclists wearing eye-trackers 12). Results showed attended road markings signs controlled but vehicle sides windows...

This paper describes a novel category of affective vibrotactile stimuli which evoke real-world sensations and details study into emotional responses to them. The properties short abstract waveforms have previously been studied shown narrow range. By contrast this investigated longer emotionally resonant stimuli, are evocative such as animal purring or running water. Two studies were conducted. first recorded Tactons with duration 20 seconds. second stimuli. Stimuli that users found more...

Social anxiety is a prevalent mental health concern that impacts quality of life and makes social spaces less accessible. We conducted two studies with socially anxious participants, investigating using affective haptic comfort objects to provide calming support during exposure. Participatory prototyping informed the design use intervention, which was then evaluated between-groups exposure task. Treatment participants held their preferred vibration-augmented prototype this task; control did...

Automated embodied moderation has the potential to create safer spaces for children in social VR, providing a protective figure that takes action mitigate harmful interactions. However, little is known about how such should be employed practice. Through interviews with 16 experts online child safety and psychology, workshops 8 guardians 13 children, we contribute comprehensive overview of Embodied Moderators (AEMs) can safeguard VR. We explore perceived concerns, benefits preferences across...

This paper investigates how presenting emotionally resonant vibrotactile stimuli at cool, neutral and warm temperature levels impacts mean ratings for emotional resonance affective response. Affective can elicit pleasant or calming responses, making them applicable emotion regulation. Evoking real-world sensations via widen their range improve effectiveness, allow to enhance immersive multimodal experiences. Thermotactile cues have been shown affect but not combined with vibrations see they...

This paper presents a survey informing user-first approach to designing calming affective haptic stimuli by eliciting user preferences in different social scenarios. Prior haptics research presented users with and recorded emotional responses. By contrast this work focuses on the sensations wish experience how these can be simulated using haptics. The (n=81) investigated which four situations reduce anxiety. Using thematic analysis of responses we created coding scheme derived from...

Gamification can change how and why people interact with software. A common approach is to use quantitative feedback give users a feeling of progress or achievement. There are, however, other ways provide motivation meaning during normal computer interactions, such as using emotional reinforcement. This could powerful new tool allow the positive effects gamification reach wider contexts. paper investigates design evaluation mobile to-do list application, 'Tamu To-Do', which utilises gamified...

Scale questionnaires are psychometric tools that capture perspectives and experiences. Consequently, these need to be reliable valid. In this paper, we investigate the impact of response widgets - UI elements allow users answer scale items on overall reliability construct validity three varied length in a user study (N=30). Our results reveal optimum was achieved using radio buttons dropdowns all varied-length questionnaires. Further, valid were produced utilising slider dropdown. No...

Physical interactions with socially assistive robots (SARs) positively affect user wellbeing. However, haptic experiences when touching a SAR are typically limited to perceiving the robot's movements or shell texture, while other modalities that could enhance touch experience robot, such as vibrotactile stimulation, under-explored. In this exploratory qualitative study, we investigate potential of enhancing human interaction PARO robot through heartbeats, goal regulate subjective wellbeing...

Shoulder surfing has been studied extensively, however, it remains unexplored whether and how impacts users. Understanding this is important as determines shoulder poses a significant concern and, if so, best to address it. By surveying smartphone users in the UK, we explore a) privacy perceptions of victim b) their interaction with smartphones. We found that impact being surfed highly individual. It perceived unavoidable frequently occurring, leading increased time for task completion....

Zoomorphic robots have the potential to offer companionship and well-being as accessible, low-maintenance alternatives pet ownership. Many such robots, however, feature limited emotional expression, restricting their for rich affective relationships with everyday domestic users. Additionally, exploring this design space using hardware prototyping is obstructed by physical logistical constraints. We leveraged virtual reality rapid passive haptic interaction conduct a broad mixed-methods...

Obfuscating people's faces using synthetically generated faces, i.e., DeepFakes, has been shown to be effective at privacy preservation. While recent work showed that DeepFake obfuscation is well perceived by viewers, the perspectives of a) owner obfuscated photo, and b) person being obfuscated, remain unclear. This paper reports on results a user study where participants uploaded their own group photos, in which they appear, applied techniques both themselves others image. The methods...

Heartbeat is not only one of our physical health indicators, but also plays an important role in emotional changes. Previous investigations have been repeatedly investigated to the soothing effects low frequency vibrotactile cues which evoke a slow heartbeat stressful situations. The impact stimuli faster heartbeats on users’ anxiety or heart rate is, however, poorly understood. We conducted two studies evaluate influence presentation fast via vibration and/or sound, both calm and stressed...

Thermal cameras have become portable enough to integrate into wearables, such as glasses, and can be used maliciously infer passwords observing heat traces left on keyboards, keypads screens. While prior work showed how AI-driven approaches further enhance the effectiveness of these attacks, we use similar detect vulnerable interfaces obfuscate defend against thermal attacks. At our Augmented Humans 2023 demo, attendees will chance a camera observe keyboard, machine learning both...