Imagine a world where, you are integrated with a computer to navigate the environment
Like this,
actually, no, less tech
like this? ... but, more discreetly
ok, how about this?
but, wait, in this just an electric bike?
Is not, let me tell you why
In this work, we explore integrated exertion, this is the design space
at the intersection between, human-computer integration, where the user and the system co-operate in a partnership
and exertion support, where the user invests physical effort as part of the user experience.
And in the experience of integration, the system is constantly sensing and interpreting data in order to act in the experience
And the data that we explore in this work is the user's neurological data read via EEG from the occipital region
That is the orange part on the back of the brain responsible for vision processing
Reading this data can tell us when a user is, or is not, in a state of peripheral awareness in real-time, and this is what we built
Introducing Ena, a novel system that affords
rider-eBike integration via the rider's neural activity.
Via an EEG cap,
Ena monitors that the user's neural activity is between
0.76 and 1.19 microvolts
within the high alpha range of 10 to 12Hz.
These correspond to the rider's field of view
being peripherally open to afford higher awareness of the environment
and it activates Ena's engine support.
Instinctively, the rider's field of view narrows as a response to a threat,
such as a car veering.
In this case,
Ena instantly stops engine support,
allowing the rider more time to respond to the situation.
with this work we imagine a future
where interactive systems are integrated
with our neural activity
to support enjoyable and safer experiences.
We studied our system with 20 bike riders and derived themes
and design tactics around designing integrated exertion experiences with neurological data
We invite you to take a read at the paper for more details
Now, I would like to focus on a few take aways from this work
Take away one,
Our work introduces and demonstrates peripheral awareness as a neurological state to HCI
This is a new approach we can use to study user's of our systems through
a non-invasive neuro-physio lightweight and real-time approach
For example, to inform future health integrations
that help user's in developing practice to reach peripheral awareness
and have a deeper understanding of their abilities
Take away two,
Changes in a user's field of view relating to peripheral awareness
can be read in real-time to gain access to
a user's pre-attentive state
This means that the system is reading directly from the user's brain
and it can react faster than what it takes a user to react to the situation
This is particularly valuable in different situations, such as,
Navigating the environment, Operating machinery
Emergency response and Team operations
where the user benefits from having a wider awareness
of the environment
Take away three,
integration directly from the user's brain can
facilitate a symbiotic-like experience
and to talk about this, I'm going to use this chart from previous work
where we see the system as an equal to the user
In this case the user and the system have their own sensing abilities that
that can complement each other
In what Farooq and Grudin called, working as partners
and partners implies two agents, however,
Mann, previously said that once computers systems reach more advance abilities
the divide between the user and the system was going to blur
and the user and the system would become one
In light of this vision,
we see now in this work the system and the user are one
and because in the 60's Licklider also told us about
the 'speed mismatch' and the 'language problem' as
obstacles in the symbiosis vision
and users of our system said that, they didn't need to think
how to communicate or how to raise the attention of the system
as it was directly from their brain wave,
so the user and the system became one
Lastly, this approach contributes to Rekimoto's call on extending the toolkit
of human-machine integrations available to us
with this, we have begun to blur this divide between the user and the system
My take home message is
Using peripheral awareness as a nerurological state for human computer integration is viable
and it offers access to a user's pre-attentive processing state
that the system can act upon to support the user experience
with that, I would like to thank you for your time,
and I'm happy to take any questions, thank you