Hello. My name is Ville Mäkelä, and in this video I will present our CHI paper
Hidden Interaction Techniques: Concealed Information Acquisition and Texting on Smartphones and Wearables.
People interact with their mobile devices frequently.
For example, we continuously check our devices for notifications,
and texting has become a fundamental form of communication.
However, interacting with personal mobile devices,
like smartphones and smartwatches,
is problematic when there are other people nearby.
This can result in privacy issues, but most importantly,
using one’s personal device is often perceived negatively
or their use might even be forbidden.
For example, pulling out a smartphone can disrupt a conversation and upset others.
In these situations, however, people often really do need to interact with their devices.
As a solution, we propose what we call hidden interaction techniques
- techniques that allow interaction with personal devices without being noticed.
In this paper, we explore two different hidden interaction techniques,
in two different social scenarios.
We particularly focus on the following questions:
First, how effectively can users hide their interaction using hidden interaction techniques?
Second, what tactics do users employ to hide their interaction?
Third, are users able to sufficiently attend to a social situation despite their interaction?
We first formulated four design goals that hidden interaction techniques should fulfill.
The first goal is "eyes-free interaction".
The technique should be usable without looking at the device.
The second goal is "no visual output".
The technique should not reveal that the device is being used.
The third goal is "natural deployment".
The technique must work on a device that is naturally carried everywhere
and that does not, in itself, attract attention.
The fourth goal is "ease of use and low effort".
The user must be able to carry on another activity,
like a conversation, while they interact.
Based on these design goals, we explored two different approaches.
As a lightweight scenario, we investigated whether vibrotactile feedback
could be used to acquire simple information from a mobile device.
People often check their smartphones for notifications,
so here, we particularly envision that vibrotactile feedback
could convey to users whether they have any noteworthy notifications, like missed calls.
So instead of pulling out the smartphone and looking at it to check its contents,
one could do so by simply feeling the phone,
and not necessarily even take it out of the pocket.
As an advanced scenario, we explored how users could write messages without being seen.
Because no existing text entry technique was fully compatible with our design goals,
we developed the concept of HideWrite, a novel text entry technique for smartwatches.
It is based on a drawing metaphor,
where users can draw characters on a dimmed watch screen one at a time.
Again, in this scenario, instead of pulling out a smartphone to type,
or using a smartwatch and closely monitoring the typing with traditional techniques,
users can keep their watch out of sight and type without looking,
or even hide the typing in plain sight by disguising it as idle fidgeting.
We evaluated these two techniques in different social scenarios:
a casual hallway discussion, and a meeting.
In both of them, one study participant was tasked with using one of the techniques
without another study participant noticing.
The other participant took on the role of the observer,
who had varying levels of knowledge about the user’s interactive task.
Despite significant differences between the interaction techniques and the evaluated scenarios,
we acquired remarkably similar results from both studies.
First, users were highly successful in hiding the interaction from the observer.
Only a fraction of the interactions were noticed,
and only when observers had some degree of prior knowledge.
Second, users generally sought to identify ideal moments to interact with their device,
to go for as little disruption as possible.
They typically interacted when someone else was speaking,
so that the focus was less on them.
Moreover, users typically attempted to hide their interaction using their body or furniture.
Third, users were able to sufficiently focus on the social situation despite their interaction.
Observers, on the other hand, reported that observing the user was very demanding
while trying to keep up with a conversation.
These findings also validate our four design goals,
which we believe provide a good basis for designing new hidden interaction techniques.
This concludes our presentation.
Thank you for your attention, and for more details, please check out our paper.