Introduction—Feelings Matter

Emotions are a hot topic in design, human–computer interaction and any area of business these days. Their significance in areas in which people make choices, decisions and engage in action has been undeniable for at least the last 40 years of psychology and consumer scholarship. What once was an extremely contested, fuzzy and (almost) easily scientifically avoidable area, is now at the centre of everyone’s interest. In an era of cognitive computing, artificial intelligence (so-called learning and thinking machines), and optimization, all attention is placed on what makes us human, and the ways in which human thought actually operates. This emotional logic, intentionality and consciousness i…

Apperception as a Multisensory Process in Material Experience

Visual perspective has dominated experience research in humantechnology interaction for decades now. The neglect of other sensory modalities is gradually being addressed by scholars and designers, who investigate user experience based on touch, smell, taste, sound and even expressive bodily interactions. In cognitive and affective processes, user experience is always multi-modal, not just regarding perceived multi-sensory information, but also while perceiving through one modality we mentally construct information relevant to the other senses. This article reports the results of an experiment, where participants (N = 52) appraised materials either only by touching them or only by seeing. Th…

Towards the Learning Experience Technology Usability framework

The availability of learning technology has increased over past decades; however, severe usability issues that cause adverse effects on the learning experience can be found in many available technologies. Learning solution usability is commonly evaluated by focusing on either technical or pedagogical usability and rarely both. This artificially separates the two important aspects of learning technology usability. This chapter provides a new framework for designing and evaluating learning solutions that synthesizes the above usability types to consider them a part of a complex and dynamic whole comprising of learning, technological design, content-related issues and context. The proposed Lea…

Sensory modalities and mental content in product experience

Contemporary research in human-technology interaction emphasises the need to focus on what people experience when they interact with technological artefacts. Understanding how people experience products requires detailed investigation of how physical design properties are mentally represented, and the theorisation of how people represent information obtained through different modalities still needs work. The objective of this study is to investigate how people experience modality-related affective aspects of products, using the psychological concept of mental content. For this purpose, we adopt the framework of user psychology, which is the sub-area of psychology involved with investigating…

How to Write Ethical User Stories? : Impacts of the ECCOLA Method

AbstractArtificial Intelligence (AI) systems are increasing in significance within software services. Unfortunately, these systems are not flawless. Their faults, failures and other systemic issues have emphasized the urgency for consideration of ethical standards and practices in AI engineering. Despite the growing number of studies in AI ethics, comparatively little attention has been placed on how ethical issues can be mitigated in software engineering (SE) practice. Currently understanding is lacking regarding the provision of useful tools that can help companies transform high-level ethical guidelines for AI ethics into the actual workflow of developers. In this paper, we explore the i…

Marimekon henki : paikka, tila ja autenttisuus

Techno-Trust and Rational Trust in Technology – A Conceptual Investigation

Part 2: Methodological; International audience; Trust is essential when using technology. If people do not trust new technology, they do not accept it. If people do not accept new technologies such as autonomous ships, their development is hampered in the absence of financial support. The importance of trust brings into question the essential conceptual components of phenomena that contribute to trust. This knowledge is required for the basis of investigating trust in technology. Especially, it is important to understand why humans trust. The reasons can be intuitive but they can also be supported by rational arguments. The latter type of trust can be called rational trust. A beneficial way…

Novel and experimental music technology use in the music classroom : learning performance, experience, and concentrated behavior

In recent years, music technology in the classroom has relied on general devices such as the iPad. In the current study, we used a mixed-methods approach to examine the learning performance, learning experience, and behavior of two class groups of primary school music students (N = 42), using established music technology (i.e., the iPad with the Keyboard Touch Instrument app) and novel music technology (KAiKU Music Glove). Results show a significant difference of change in test scores during learning (p = <.01) and a medium effect-size is found (d = .75), indicating use of the iPad and Keyboard Touch Instrument app contributed to increased learning when compared to the KAiKU Music Glove.…

Me, My Bot and His Other (Robot) Woman? Keeping Your Robot Satisfied in the Age of Artificial Emotion

With a backdrop of action and science fiction movie horrors of the dystopian relationship between humans and robots, surprisingly to date-with the exception of ethical discussions-the relationship aspect of humans and sex robots has seemed relatively unproblematic. The attraction to sex robots perhaps is the promise of unproblematic affectionate and sexual interactions, without the need to consider the other&rsquo

Performing Science: Blurring the Boundaries Among Art, Research, and Academic Communities

When and where does the art performance stop? Are there boundaries? The aesthetics of actions can be viewed as a series of unique artistic and genuine experiences and expressions. Through these aesthetics, a narrative unfolds, action turns to progress, and consciousness expands with each portion of new knowledge. When life and its contents are viewed as a part of this artistic experiential process, it is impossible to disconnect one action from another. After intentionally opening the art performance, there is no way for an artist to consciously determine what this performance includes and, more importantly, what it excludes. This paper discusses a performance project that was initiated in …

Exploring aesthetics, design, and experience in the age of semiotic technology

Semiotics undergirds understanding of how people experience life (in both general and specific contexts) and thus impacts choices in regard to technology and its design. The papers in this issue draw on historical and contemporary scholarship of philosophy, practices, and theories in aesthetics, embodiment, and art experience in exploring the intersection of humans and technology.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONS:TOWARDS A COGNITIVE SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF MEANING IN HUMAN TECHNOLOGY INTERACTION

Information technology has perpetuated the role of symbolism in everyday life practice, through its reliance on sign systems for its creation and operation. Increasingly attention has been placed on applying semiotic techniques to analyze user interface design and usability. Surprisingly, although the move towards symbolic interaction has been one of the most striking components of the digital shift, it has proven difficult to build bridges between semiotics and HTI-design thinking. In this article we argue that the problems in linking semiotic analysis of human technology interaction with modern HTI-design paradigms such as usability or user experience arise from a theoretical gap between …

Symbolic Interactions : Towards a Cognitive Scientific Theory of Meaning in Human Technology Interaction

Information technology has perpetuated the role of symbolism in everyday life practice, through its reliance on sign systems for its creation and operation. Increasingly attention has been placed on applying semiotic techniques to analyze user interface design and usability. Surprisingly, although the move towards symbolic interaction has been one of the most striking components of the digital shift, it has proven difficult to build bridges between semiotics and HTI-design thinking. In this article we argue that the problems in linking semiotic analysis of human technology interaction with modern HTI-design paradigms such as usability or user experience arise from a theoretical gap between …

I’ll tell you why Cognitive Science is important

The Role of Explainable AI in the Research Field of AI Ethics

Ethics of Artiicial Intelligence (AI) is a growing research ield that has emerged in response to the challenges related to AI. Transparency poses a key challenge for implementing AI ethics in practice. One solution to transparency issues is AI systems that can explain their decisions. Explainable AI (XAI) refers to AI systems that are interpretable or understandable to humans. The research ields of AI ethics and XAI lack a common framework and conceptualization. There is no clarity of the ield’s depth and versatility. A systematic approach to understanding the corpus is needed. A systematic review ofers an opportunity to detect research gaps and focus points. This paper presents the results…

From cute to content : user experience from a cognitive semiotic perspective

Unremarkable experiences - Designing the user experience of elevators

Elevators enable people and goods to be transported to great heights at substantial speeds.The feats required technologically for suspension, movement, controls and safety are no less than remarkable. This is increasingly so when considering the competing new heights of skyscrapers. Although technological accomplishments are becoming ever more extraordinary, for the sake of those using the technologies, there is also the need to counter this remarkableness and consider the unremarkable as an experiential design goal. Discourse in user experience (UX) has mainly focused on designing for positive, affective and memorable experiences. However, in the case of utilitarian technologies such as el…

Children’s conceptions of mental well-being and ideas for its promotion through digital environments

The aim of this study is to further understanding of children’s conceptions of mental well-being and their ideas for its digital promotion. The study is based on the need to provide children an opportunity to actively participate and share their understanding of mental well-being promotion with others in light of their understanding of what online environments and their design can afford for this promotion. The study was implemented as three subsequent workshops in primary school classrooms comprising four teachers and 79 children aged 9-11 years old. In the first two workshops, children reflected on mental well-being, digital environments they utilise and their possible connections to ment…

The Dawn of the Human-Machine Era: A forecast of new and emerging language technologies

New language technologies are coming, thanks to the huge and competing private investment fuelling rapid progress; we can either understand and foresee their effects, or be taken by surprise and spend our time trying to catch up. This report scketches out some transformative new technologies that are likely to fundamentally change our use of language. Some of these may feel unrealistically futuristic or far-fetched, but a central purpose of this report - and the wider LITHME network - is to illustrate that these are mostly just the logical development and maturation of technologies currently in prototype. But will everyone benefit from all these shiny new gadgets? Throughout this report we …

Life-based design as an extension of problem-based learning — A tool for understanding people and technology

Global conditions are changing at such a rate that foreseeing trends in technological development, economic fluctuations and climatic conditions is ever more difficult. When developing technologies, there is one constant factor that practitioners and researchers should be aware of, and that is people. This is not to say that people, culture and social conditions remain stagnant, for these too evolve with the surrounding circumstances. Rather, appropriate tools and capabilities for investigating people, their lives and life situations, are integral to understanding what people need in terms of technology, how these technologies will be used, and more importantly how they will be valued in th…

Editorial:Governance AI ethics

Evaluating the Authenticity of Virtual Environments: Comparison of Three Devices

Immersive virtual environments (VEs) have the potential to provide novel cost effective ways for evaluating not only new environments and usability scenarios, but also potential user experiences. To achieve this, VEs must be adequately realistic. The level of perceived authenticity can be ascertained by measuring the levels of immersion people experience in their VE interactions. In this paper the degree of authenticity is measured via anauthenticity indexin relation to three different immersive virtual environment devices. These devices include (1) a headband, (2) 3D glasses, and (3) a head-mounted display (HMD). A quick scale for measuring immersion, feeling of control, and simulator sick…

Beyond MAYA for game-changing multisensory design

With information technology becoming ever more embedded in our surrounding everyday things, the nature of interactions and the way we experience digitalization is becoming increasingly embodied. Thus, growing effort is placed on examining the multisensory nature of interaction experience. From a design perspective, increased knowledge of how people experience materials and how to design to encourage varying material experiences opens new opportunities for the generation of rich multisensory user experience, and accomplishing game-changing results. In particular, the innovation space opened up by understanding people's material expectations of designs is significant. An experiment (N = 78) w…

Educational Technology Goes Mobile

Recent decades have revealed that the digital educational technology that is expected to revolutionise schooling for generations to come, is fraught with challenges. One major challenge is that educational systems vastly vary between cultures and countries. The differences start from the conceptualisation of education and school. It is, therefore, quite inaccurate to handle education as a universal concept. In this article the authors evade generalisation by discussing the use of mobile technology in the schools of one single, relatively homogenous nation: Finland. The backbone of their analysis is the core national curriculum of basic education. The appropriateness of mobile technology in …

Emotions in Technology Design

Understanding emotions is becoming ever more valuable in design, both in terms of what people prefer as well as in relation to how they behave in relation to it. Approaches to conceptualising emotions in technology design, how emotions can be operationalised and how they can be measured are paramount to ascertaining the core principles of design.Emotions in Technology Design: From Experience to Ethics provides a multi-dimensional approach to studying, designing and comprehending emotions in design. It presents emotions as understood through basic human-technology research, applied design practice, culture and aesthetics, ethical approaches to emotional design, and ethics as a cultural frame…

Lying Cheating Robots : Robots and Infidelity

Love has been described as unpredictable, immeasurable and non-purchasable and as such, poses challenges for anyone in a relationship to both stay in love, and to not fall in love with someone else. Scientists are still discovering whether or not love follows any specific recipe. Outlooks, personality, sense of humor and talent may not perfectly guarantee an individual falls in love with another, and more importantly is able to sustain that relationship. This article portrays a futuristic scenario in which truly intelligent and emotional robots already exist. Here, the bi-directional love discussed in Lovotics is not simulated through engineering, but rather is genuine from the perspectives…

The experience of no experience Elevator UX and the role of unconscious experience

Elevators are designed to facilitate the smooth and efficient transportation of people from one architectural floor to the next. If they work well, people should not think about the journey at all. Instead, their concentration should remain focused on the activity they were engaged in before entering the elevator usage interaction. In other words, if the design works properly, people should not consciously experience elevator interaction. This paper presents the issue of studying no (conscious) user experience. It takes a theoretical perspective to explain aspects of consciousness and embodiment. While most studies on user experience focus on remarkable and affective interaction experiences…

Life-based design as an extension of problem-based learning:A tool for understanding people and technology

Global conditions are changing at such a rate that foreseeing trends in technological development, economic fluctuations and climatic conditions is ever more difficult. When developing technologies, there is one constant factor that practitioners and researchers should be aware of, and that is people. This is not to say that people, culture and social conditions remain stagnant, for these too evolve with the surrounding circumstances. Rather, appropriate tools and capabilities for investigating people, their lives and life situations, are integral to understanding what people need in terms of technology, how these technologies will be used, and more importantly how they will be valued in th…

Using human-values as a guide for understanding worthy design directions in augmented reality

Augmented reality is a fast developing field, which will no doubt gain strong footing in the area of social media in the near future. Recently, Google Glass placed AR towards the top of the technological hype curve in regards to interaction possibilities, information overlay, information search and recording. Questions still remain however, regarding the added-value that AR offers to already existing interaction modes and technologies. In this study four concepts were designed and tested via video scenarios. The concepts related to three main product categories: educational tools; information presentation; and x-ray vision. The results positively reflected on the application of AR for educa…

Digital Mental Health Resources for Children and Youth : Evaluation of Strengths in User Interface Design

The aim of this research is to explore the positive user interface (UI) design of digital mental health resources for children and youth. For this purpose, a heuristic model is introduced and heuristic evaluation is used as a method to systematically assess 49 digital mental health resources. In the assessment, the resources are evaluated by observing the prevalence of UI design strengths defined in the heuristic model. The results of the study indicate that the resources analyzed have strengths especially in the dimensions of visual design, content, reliability, engagement and functional design. Furthermore, all of the resources have at least four design strengths, creating a good basis fo…

Towards a scenario of virtual mental health environments for school-aged children

This study explores student teachers’ future design scenarios focusing on promoting children’s mental health literacy through virtual reality (VR) environments. VR use is on the verge of many breakthroughs in several areas of lived experience. One such area pertains to educational contexts. Student teachers were chosen as the subjects of this study due to the likelihood that they will be the primary users and disseminators of these emerging technologies in educational contexts. The students created five types of future scenarios that contained different environments and activity modes, including those that are still not yet feasible to realize with current technological capabilities. The ai…

Is There Any Hope for Developing Automated Translation Technology for Sign Languages?

This article discusses the prerequisites for the machine translation of sign languages. The topic is complex, including questions relating to technology, interaction design, linguistics and culture. At the moment, despite the affordances provided by the technology, automated translation between signed and spoken languages – or between sign languages – is not possible. The very need of such translation and its associated technology can also be questioned. Yet, we believe that contributing to the improvement of sign language detection, processing and even sign language translation to spoken languages in the future is a matter that should not be abandoned. However, we argue that this work shou…

That Crazy World We’ll Live in : Emotions and Anticipations of Radical Future Technology Design

Humans behave towards and experience technological design in conflicting and contradictory ways. On the one hand, the very mention of the word ‘future’ conjures expectations of the radically new and unexpected. On the other hand, previous research has shown that people have a threshold for the level of change and the unexpected that they can cope with. Their expectations are dominated by mental images of familiar associations with what has been previously associated with the future. As a rule, humans cope with incremental changes, yet have difficulty accepting the entirely unfamiliar. This makes it harder to imagine a future of radical technology design and interactions, particularly when a…

Marimekko : gender and nation through text and image - an international perspective

Learning Experience Technology Usability Design framework

Using information and communication technology (ICT) for learning purposes has become more ingrained in curriculums and students’ lives over the past decades. Commonly, the lack of understanding about learning and pedagogy, and more specifically their contexts, will lead to creating learning software that utilize outdated pedagogy or are lacking in critical aspects of pedagogical design. This has created a need to find cost efficient ways to address the multidimensional usability issues found in learning technology. Creating an engaging and pedagogically robust learning product is a complicated task that requires easily accessible knowledge about both the technological and learning related …

User Psychology Lab, University of Jyväskylä

Ethical Stance and Evolving Technosexual Culture : A Case for Human-Computer Interaction

Issues relating to ethics and how moral principles evolve are imminently engrained in culture. Culture and technology cannot be separated from one another, as both are processes and reflections of social cognition and experience through action and practice. Technology is the embodiment of values and enabler of culture. As technology develops and human relationships to information technology (IT) become ever more intricate and intimate the cultural framework underpinning values and ethics also morphs. The Internet is everywhere and humans are reliant on it for everything from banking to maintaining family relationships. Anything an individual could possibly desire can be found within the mas…

A Deployment Model to Extend Ethically Aligned AI Implementation Method ECCOLA

There is a struggle in Artificial intelligence (AI) ethics to gain ground in actionable methods and models to be utilized by practitioners while developing and implementing ethically sound AI systems. AI ethics is a vague concept without a consensus of definition or theoretical grounding and bearing little connection to practice. Practice involving primarily technical tasks like software development is not aptly equipped to process and decide upon ethical considerations. Efforts to create tools and guidelines to help people working with AI development have been concentrating almost solely on the technical aspects of AI. A few exceptions do apply, such as the ECCOIA method for creating ethic…

Social interaction design--

Emotions and Technoethics

The relationship between emotions and ethics has been debated for centuries. The act of understanding emotions through the framework of ethics involves accepting that emotions are to some extent culturally dependent. By linking emotions in design to larger ethical discussions, it may be accepted that ethics and design are both technological constructions designed to shape a collective worldview. While both are cultural constructions, they are in constant dialogue with one another through social discourse and individualistic cognitive–affective appraisal processes. This chapter presents an account of technoethics that challenges ideas of ethical values embedded within technology, drawing att…

Fashion Technology : What Are the Limits of Emerging Technological Design Thinking?

Designing intelligent technologies is a multidisciplinary process. From this perspective, fashion has continued to be an under explored dimension of technology design. While there persistently are connections between the term fashion and the clothing design industry, an historical and sociological approach to fashion reveals a much deeper and permeating understanding of the notion and its implications across the technological world. During recent popular developments, the interrelationship between fashion as a concept and technology as components and proponents of fashion – technology as fashion promoter (think of Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook and even LinkedIn for example), and technology as…

Usability challenges in digital learning solutions

Usability is a key element in successful software. Ensuring the technical usability of a learning solution enables users to focus on their main task, learning. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the results of heuristic usability evaluations of digital learning solutions. Heuristic evaluations were conducted on 24 digital learning solutions from one country (Finland) and two country groups (Asian countries and Spanish speaking countries) concentrating on the usability of the user interface of each evaluated solution. The main results of this study indicate that a few heuristics cover the majority of all usability problems (UPs) observed in learning solutions, but these heuristics c…

Emotions toward cognitive enhancement technologies and the body – Attitudes and willingness to use

While technological development is becoming more integrated into our surrounding environments, it is also moving closer towards the human body. In fact, numerous examples can be seen in which information technology (IT) is being designed not just for use on the body, but also inside it. Technologies dominating this domain can be described as ‘cognitive enhancement technologies’ (CETs). These technologies are intended to enhance people's cognitive capabilities, and can be viewed in the forms of implants, lens, drugs, and then moving outward, smart clothing, watches and physical environments to name some. The present study focused on measuring peoples’ (N=104) emotions towards and willingness…

Socio-emotional Experience in Human Technology Interaction Design – A Fashion Framework Proposal

Technology designers and developers can be understood as social experience (SE) mediators. In user experience (UX), notions of SE have served to identify and define the factors contributing to human-technology interaction (HTI). Three dominant perspectives have been promoted in UX discourse: 1) SE of brand, brand value and consumer culture; 2) technology design as mediator of human-to-human interactions; and 3) meaning generation through action and interaction between actors. Symbolic interactionalism understands meaning as occurring through dialogue, in the construction of the social self, promoting self-reflection as a social construction. This theorisation of social experience is valuabl…

Simplicity and the art of something more: A cognitive-semiotic approach to simplicity and complexity in human-technology interaction and design experience

In human–technology interaction, the balance between simplicity and complexity has been much discussed. Emphasis is placed on the value of simplicity when designing for usability. Often simplicity is interpreted as reductionism, which compromises both the affective nature of the design and usability itself. This paper takes a cognitive–semiotic approach toward understanding the dynamics between the utilitarian benefits of simplicity in design and the art of something more: considerate complexity. The cognitive–semiotic approach to human–technology design experience is a vehicle for explaining the relationship between simplicity and complexity, and this relationship’s multisensory character …

Formidable Bracelet, Beautiful Lantern

We live in an experience economy. The more saturated the global market becomes with products offering the same functions, services and quality, the more companies are wanting to appeal to the intangible needs and desires of consumers. To achieve this, designers and researchers are turning inwards to investigate the psychological factors affecting peoples' relationships and reactions towards design properties. For this reason, design semantics studies on user experience have been advancing all the time. Much emphasis has been placed on visual product experience, as well as the relationship between brand perception and user experience. These are important steps, which are referred to in this …

Creative interpretation in web design experience

Insight into how people mentally represent, and thus, make sense of visual designs is the key to understanding how people interact with technological devices. This paper presents a study in which participants were asked to write their interpretations of two webpage design examples, based on what they thought they would say and what would remain as a thought. The data comprised 80 3E templates (N = 40), a template allowing participants to express experiences through writing and drawing. Inductive data analysis through a phenomenological lens revealed that supposed mental and verbal representations concentrated on the following design properties: colors, themes, interface layout and quality, …

Governance of Ethical and Trustworthy Al Systems: Research Gaps in the ECCOLA Method

Advances in machine learning (ML) technologies have greatly improved Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. As a result, AI systems have become ubiquitous, with their application prevalent in virtually all sectors. However, AI systems have prompted ethical concerns, especially as their usage crosses boundaries in sensitive areas such as healthcare, transportation, and security. As a result, users are calling for better AI governance practices in ethical AI systems. Therefore, AI development methods are encouraged to foster these practices. This research analyzes the ECCOLA method for developing ethical and trustworthy AI systems to determine if it enables AI governance in development process…