Sharing breathing signals has the capacity to provide insights into hidden experiences and enhance interpersonal communication. However, it remains unclear how the modality of breath signals (visual, haptic) is socially interpreted during collaborative tasks. In this mixed-methods study, we design and evaluate BreatheWithMe, a prototype for real-time sharing and receiving of breathing signals through visual, vibrotactile, or visual-vibrotactile modalities. In a within-subjects study (15 pairs), we investigated the effects of modality on breathing synchrony, social presence, and overall user experience. Key findings showed: (a) there were no significant effects of visualization modality on breathing synchrony, only on deliberate music-driven synchronization; (b) visual modality was preferred over vibrotactile feedback, despite no differences across social presence dimensions; (c) BreatheWithMe was perceived to be an insightful window into others, however included data exposure and social acceptability concerns. We contribute insights into the design of multi-modal real-time breathing visualization systems for colocated, collaborative tasks.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a sudden shift to virtual work and events, with the last two years enabling an appropriated and rather simulated togetherness - the hybrid mode. As we return to in-person events, it is important to reflect on not only what we learned about technologies and social justice, but about the types of events we desire, and how to re-design them accordingly. This SIG aims to reflect on hybrid events and their execution: scaling them across sectors, communities, and industries; considering trade-offs when choosing technologies; studying best practices and defining measures of "success"for hybrid events; and finally, identifying and charting the wider social, ethical, and legal implications of hybrid formats. This SIG will consolidate these topics by inviting participants to collaboratively reflect on previous hybrid experiences and what can be learned from them.

Eliciting and capturing drivers' affective responses in a realistic outdoor setting with pedestrians poses a challenge when designing in-vehicle, empathic interfaces. To address this, we designed a controlled, outdoor car driving circuit where drivers (N=27) drove and encountered pedestrian confederates who performed non-verbal positive or non-positive road crossing actions towards them. Our findings reveal that drivers reported higher valence upon observing positive, non-verbal crossing actions, and higher arousal upon observing non-positive crossing actions. Drivers' heart signals (BVP, IBI and BPM), skin conductance and facial expressions (brow lowering, eyelid tightening, nose wrinkling, and lip stretching) all varied significantly when observing positive and non-positive actions. Our car driving study, by drawing on realistic driving conditions, further contributes to the development of in-vehicle empathic interfaces that leverage behavioural and physiological sensing. Through automatic inference of driver affect resulting from pedestrian actions, our work can enable novel empathic interfaces for supporting driver emotion self-regulation.

Instead of predicting just one emotion for one activity (e.g., video watching), fine-grained emotion recognition enables more temporally precise recognition. Previous works on fine-grained emotion recognition require segment-by-segment, fine-grained emotion labels to train the recognition algorithm. However, experiments to collect these labels are costly and time-consuming compared with only collecting one emotion label after the user watched that stimulus (i.e., the post-stimuli emotion labels). To recognize emotions at a finer granularity level when trained with only post-stimuli labels, we propose an emotion recognition algorithm based on Deep Multiple Instance Learning (EDMIL) using physiological signals. EDMIL recognizes fine-grained valence and arousal (V-A) labels by identifying which instances represent the post-stimuli V-A annotated by users after watching the videos. Instead of fully-supervised training, the instances are weakly-supervised by the post-stimuli labels in the training stage. The V-A of instances are estimated by the instance gains, which indicate the probability of instances to predict the post-stimuli labels. We tested EDMIL on three different datasets, CASE, MERCA and CEAP-360VR, collected in three different environments: desktop, mobile and HMD-based Virtual Reality, respectively. Recognition results validated with the fine-grained V-A self-reports show that for subject-independent 3-class classification (high/neutral/low), EDMIL obtains promising recognition accuracies: 75.63% and 79.73% for V-A on CASE, 70.51% and 67.62% for V-A on MERCA and 65.04% and 67.05% for V-A on CEAP-360VR. Our ablation study shows that all components of EDMIL contribute to both the classification and regression tasks. Our experiments also show that (1) compared with fully-supervised learning, weakly-supervised learning can reduce the problem of overfitting caused by the temporal mismatch between fine-grained annotations and physiological signals, (2) instance segment lengths between 1-2 s result in the highest recognition accuracies and (3) EDMIL performs best if post-stimuli annotations consist of less than 30% or more than 60% of the entire video watching.

Measuring interoception ('perceiving internal bodily states') has diagnostic and wellbeing implications. Since heartbeats are distinct and frequent, various methods aim at measuring cardiac interoceptive accuracy (CIAcc). However, the role of exteroceptive modalities for representing heart rate (HR) across screen-based and Virtual Reality (VR) environments remains unclear. Using a PolarH10 HR monitor, we develop a modality-dependent cardiac recognition task that modifies displayed HR. In a mixed-factorial design (N=50), we investigate how task environment (Screen, VR), modality (Audio, Visual, Audio-Visual), and real-time HR modifications (±15%, ±30%, None) influence CIAcc, interoceptive awareness, mind-body measures, VR presence, and post-experience responses. Findings showed that participants confused their HR with underestimates up to 30%; environment did not affect CIAcc but influenced mind-related measures; modality did not influence CIAcc, however including audio increased interoceptive awareness; and VR presence inversely correlated with CIAcc. We contribute a lightweight and extensible cardiac interoception measurement method, and implications for biofeedback displays.

Emotion plays a key role in the emerging wave of immersive, multi-sensory audience news engagement experiences. Since emotions can be triggered by somatosensory feedback, in this work we explore how augmenting news video watching with haptics can influence affective perceptions of news. Using a mixed-methods approach, we design and evaluate FeelTheNews, a prototype that combines vibrotactile and thermal stimulation (Matching, 70Hz/20° C, 200Hz/40° C) during news video watching. In a within-subjects study (N=20), we investigate the effects of haptic stimulation and video valence on perceived valence, emotion intensity, comfort, and overall haptic experiences. Findings showed: (a) news valence and emotion intensity ratings were not affected by haptics, (b) no stimulation was more comfortable than including stimulation, (c) attention and engagement with the news can override haptic sensations, and (d) users' perceived agency over their reactions is critical to avoid distrust. We contribute cautionary insights for haptic augmentation of the news watching experience.

Capturing drivers’ affective responses given driving context and driver-pedestrian interactions remains a challenge for designing in-vehicle, empathic interfaces. To address this, we conducted two lab-based studies using camera and physiological sensors. Our first study collected participants’ (N = 21) emotion self-reports and physiological signals (including facial temperatures) toward non-verbal, pedestrian crossing videos from the Joint Attention for Autonomous Driving dataset. Our second study increased realism by employing a hybrid driving simulator setup to capture participants’ affective responses (N = 24) toward enacted, non-verbal pedestrian crossing actions. Key findings showed: (a) non-positive actions in videos elicited higher arousal ratings, whereas different in-video pedestrian crossing actions significantly influenced participants’ physiological signals. (b) Non-verbal pedestrian interactions in the hybrid simulator setup significantly influenced participants’ facial expressions, but not their physiological signals. We contribute to the development of in-vehicle empathic interfaces that draw on behavioral and physiological sensing to in-situ infer driver affective responses during non-verbal pedestrian interactions.

Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) such as Alexa and Google Home that use human-like design cues are an increasingly popular means for accessing news. Self-disclosure in particular may be used to build relationships of trust with users who may reveal intimate details about themselves. This information can be (mis)used by algorithms to tailor and deliver partisan, critical news at the cost of journalistic ethics. In this position paper, we argue that self-disclosing VUIs may be beneficial to build trust with users and deliver news. We explain how a self-disclosing relationship may not only be a step towards human-like voice assistants but also aid in acceptance of, and exposure to different news events. We caution against obvious pitfalls from both a system and journalistic perspective and provide measures to address such concerns.

Fine-grained emotion recognition can model the temporal dynamics of emotions, which is more precise than predicting one emotion retrospectively for an activity (e.g., video clip watching). Previous works require large amounts of continuously annotated data to train an accurate recognition model, however experiments to collect such large amounts of continuously annotated physiological signals are costly and time-consuming. To overcome this challenge, we propose an Emotion recognition algorithm based on Deep Siamese Networks (EmoDSN) which can rapidly converge on a small amount of training data, typically less than 10 samples per class (i.e., <10 shot). EmoDSN recognizes fine-grained valence and arousal (V-A) labels by maximizing the distance metric between signal segments with different V-A labels. We tested EmoDSN on three different datasets collected in three different environments: desktop, mobile and HMD-based virtual reality, respectively. The results from our experiments show that EmoDSN achieves promising results for both one-dimension binary (high/low V-A, 1D-2 C) and two-dimensional 5-class (four quadrants of V- A space + neutral, 2D-5 C) classification. We get an averaged accuracy of 76.04, 76.62 and 57.62% for 1D-2 C valence, 1D-2 C arousal, and 2D-5 C, respectively, by using only 5 shots of training data. Our experiments show that EmoDSN can achieve better results if we select training samples from the changing points of emotion or the ending moments of video watching.

Social VR enables people to interact over distance with others in real-time. It allows remote people, typically represented as avatars, to communicate and perform activities together in a shared virtual environment, extending the capabilities of traditional social platforms like Facebook and Netflix. This paper explores the benefits and drawbacks provided by a lightweight and low-cost Social VR platform (SocialVR), in which users are captured by several cameras and reconstructed in real-time. In particular, the paper contributes with (1) the design and evaluation of an experimental protocol for Social VR experiences; (2) the report of a production workflow for this new type of media experiences; and (3) the results of experiments with both end-users (N = 15 pairs) and professionals (N = 22 companies) to evaluate the potential of the SocialVR platform. Results from the questionnaires and semi-structured interviews show that end-users rated positively towards the experiences provided by the SocialVR platform, which enabled them to sense emotions and communicate effortlessly. End-users perceived the photo-realistic experience of SocialVR similar to face-to-face scenarios and appreciated this new creative medium. From a commercial perspective, professionals confirmed the potential of this communication medium and encourage further research for the adoption of the platform in the commercial landscape.

Visualizing biosignals can be important for social Virtual Reality (VR), where avatar non-verbal cues are missing. While several biosignal representations exist, designing effective visualizations and understanding user perceptions within social VR entertainment remains unclear. We adopt a mixed-methods approach to design biosignals for social VR entertainment. Using survey (N=54), context-mapping (N=6), and co-design (N=6) methods, we derive four visualizations. We then ran a within-subjects study (N=32) in a virtual jazz-bar to investigate how heart rate (HR) and breathing rate (BR) visualizations, and signal rate, influence perceived avatar arousal, user distraction, and preferences. Findings show that skeuomorphic visualizations for both biosignals allow differentiable arousal inference; skeuomorphic and particles were least distracting for HR, whereas all were similarly distracting for BR; biosignal perceptions often depend on avatar relations, entertainment type, and emotion inference of avatars versus spaces. We contribute HR and BR visualizations, and considerations for designing social VR entertainment biosignal visualizations.

Automatically inferring drivers' emotions during driver-pedestrian interactions to improve road safety remains a challenge for designing in-vehicle, empathic interfaces. To that end, we carried out a lab-based study using a combination of camera and physiological sensors. We collected participants' (N=21) real-time, affective (emotion self-reports, heart rate, pupil diameter, skin conductance, and facial temperatures) responses towards non-verbal, pedestrian crossing videos from the Joint Attention for Autonomous Driving (JAAD) dataset. Our findings reveal that positive, non-verbal, pedestrian crossing actions in the videos elicit higher valence ratings from participants, while non-positive actions elicit higher arousal. Different pedestrian crossing actions in the videos also have a significant influence on participants' physiological signals (heart rate, pupil diameter, skin conductance) and facial temperatures. Our findings provide a first step toward enabling in-car empathic interfaces that draw on behavioural and physiological sensing to in situ infer driver emotions during non-verbal pedestrian interactions.

While affective non-verbal communication between pedestrians and drivers has been shown to improve on-road safety and driving experiences, it remains a challenge to design driver assistance systems that can automatically capture these affective cues. In this early work, we identify users' emotional self-report responses towards commonly occurring pedestrian actions while crossing a road. We conducted a crowd-sourced web-based survey (N=91), where respondents with prior driving experience viewed videos of 25 pedestrian interaction scenarios selected from the JAAD (Joint Attention for Autonomous Driving) dataset, and thereafter provided valence and arousal self-reports. We found participants' emotion self-reports (especially valence) are strongly influenced by actions including hand waving, nodding, impolite hand gestures, and inattentive pedestrian(s) crossing while engaged with a phone. Our findings provide a first step towards designing in-vehicle empathic interfaces that can assist in driver emotion regulation during on-road interactions, where the identified pedestrian actions serve as future driver emotion induction stimuli.