**4. Pilot study**

To understand the effectiveness of our design, a pilot study was conducted to understand the users' behaviors and responses to the provided visualization in teamwork under time pressure.

#### **4.1. Participant and apparatus**

Sixteen participants (seven males, nine females) were recruited and divided into two groups: eight for the static visualization and another eight for the dynamic visualization. For each visualization, the eight participants were further evenly divided into two teams. The study is conducted in a meeting room where a projection-mapped clock was installed on the wall. As shown in **Figure 4**, the visualization of the projection is controlled by a computer.

### **4.2. Task and stimuli**

Static visualization (**Figure 2**) is an ambient intervention, which is inspired by Zen garden. The sand traces changed imperceptibly slowly within a glance, so it appears to be static. When everyone in the team feels stressed (**Figure 2a**), the entire clock is covered by dense patterns, showing the even pressure of every team member. When someone(s) feels stressed, but someone(s) does not (**Figure 2b**), the sand traces appear to be bipolar: half of the clock is covered by dense traces, but half of it is not. The ratio of the two parts also displays the uneven loadings of workers. When everyone in the team does not feel stressed (**Figure 2c**), the sand traces are slowly erased, so it appears to be peaceful. With these trace patterns of the sand, the

**Figure 2.** Static visualization. (a) Everyone in the team feels stressed. (b) Someone(s) feel stressed, someone(s) do not. (c)

Proceedings of the Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement - Sense and Sensitivity, DeSForM

Dynamic visualization (**Figure 3**) is a dynamic intervention, which is inspired by water shows. The light pattern spins, dilates, and erodes in a stable speed, which is governed by several sine functions, to provide dynamic but peaceful representation when the users take a glance at the clock. When everyone in the team feels stressed (**Figure 3a**), a colorful spiral is displayed around the clock with dense, long traces, showing the even pressure of every team member. The length of trace changes with the time pressure. When someone(s) feels stressed, but someone(s) does not (**Figure 3b**), the density of spiral varies with time to display the uneven loadings of workers. The density of spiral also changes according to the unevenness of task loads. When everyone in the team does not feel stressed (**Figure 3c**), the length of trace reduced, so it appears like a peaceful, rotating color wheel. The design also attempts to use many positive metaphors such as the colors and shapes [25] to provide cheerful experiences.

**Figure 3.** Dynamic visualization. (a) Everyone in the team feels stressed. (b) Someone(s) feel stressed, someone(s) do not.

(c) Everyone in the team does not feel stressed.

Everyone in the team does not feel stressed.

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design also attempts to evoke inner peace, calmness, and tranquility of people.

Domino game is chosen as a pressure cooker because of the following three reasons. First, domino is a game that participants from various cultural backgrounds are familiar with, introducing immediate walk-up-and-use system to our study. Second, domino games not only require but also encourage teamwork. Third, the difficulty of domino games is easily adjustable based on the complexity of construction. By assigning different domino challenges to a team by asking them to complete it within a given period, we can test our system and obtain initial feedback with this pressure cooker.

Each team was asked to finish each of the three tasks in 5 minutes. The tasks are designed in different difficulties. The first task is to collaborate with each other and make a 2D pattern that can be knocked down in one push. This refers to an easy task that associated with lowstress status. The second task is to collaborate with each other and make a 3D round tower,

**Figure 4.** Experimental apparatus.

as shown in **Figure 4**. This refers to a relatively stressful task for everyone in the team. In the third task, we divide the team into two groups: one group is asked to build a 3D tower, and another group is asked to build a 2D pattern in the middle of the 3D tower. This refers to two uneven and mutual-dependent stressful tasks performed by each of the two groups in the team.

The transitions of visualization are human controlled. The stress visualization of all the tasks started from the stressless visualization (S0). In Task 1, we keep the same visualization until the end. In Task 2, we switch the visualization from S0 to the even stress visualization (S1) after 1–1.5 minutes the task started without noticing the participants. Similarly, in Task 3, the visualization was switched unconsciously from S0 to the uneven stress visualization (S2) after 1–1.5 minutes the task started. The stages of visualization quietly and gradually transit without disturbing the participants. After all the three tasks were performed, an interview is conducted to gather feedback from all participants.

#### **4.3. User feedback**

Static visualization: The static visualization brought peaceful feelings to most participants, and they reported that it has less interruption of their ongoing work. Half of the participants (4/8) mentioned that they like the feeling of the static pattern and it won't disturb their ongoing work. Comments from participants like "It looks nice. I like the natural feeling of irregular patterns than a digital one." "The thing I like more is it's different that I saw before. It's new, the material." "I can't imagine how comes up with this idea, the sand, the appearance looked more attractive." One participant (P1) commented "There's a lot of directions and lines, must indicate stress, is it?" "There's a lot of patterns over there so it's stress, but the flat one likes empty, so very peaceful." "This means half of us stressed and half are not stressed." "Right now it's all stressed!" One (P7) also mentioned "I realize this scene is much easier for me to understand the stress status." Most participants (6/8) described the influences of the static pattern to their internal activities. "I feel the flat pattern made me more relaxed compared with the striped one. Because it feels like some kind of scratches." "It has kinds of regulation, it reminds me meditation, like the Zen garden." Most participants (6/8) claimed that they can hardly associate the stress status with the static pattern without clarifying the announcement in the beginning. Since we intend to apply positive metaphors to visualize something negative in life, it is necessary to declare the initial intention of the expression in advance. Otherwise, the expressions will be too abstract to be accepted by the audiences. Overall, the feedback shows that the static visualization could help people adjust their inner peace through public display as a mean of visual intervention. The correlation between the visualization and the stress needs to be improved since most of them claimed that they did not feel connected to the visualization in the first place.

Dynamic visualization: People hold split opinions about the dynamic visualization. Part of them claimed that they like dynamic feedback, and they felt that it looks like real-time heart rate, while there are participants who also brought up that the quick changing shapes distract their attention in some way. Many participants (5/8) mentioned that the dynamic pattern looks like a symbol of time pressure. One participant (P3) commented that "Now it's like somebody is telling you that you need to hurry up." One participant (P4) claimed that it symbolizes the group heart rate "Is it the group's biomedical signal? It reminds me of heart rate." Some participants (2/8) stated that stress information is useful to themselves to better cope with it because it is unnoticeable. For example, one (P1) commented that "Stress is very unconscious, it's hard to aware of my feeling that I'm under stress, but when I think about it, I can control myself and try to manage it." On the contrary, like (P5) claimed that offering collective stress information will bring more stress. For instance, participant (P8) said "I would be more stressed if I see other people is under stress. Stress display might makes me anxious, that I should be stressed as the same." In summary, the dynamic stress visualization could easily get people's attention and accessible to provide stress information. One thing that needs to be designed carefully is to what extent the dynamic expression may produce disturbance to people.

#### **4.4. Summary**

as shown in **Figure 4**. This refers to a relatively stressful task for everyone in the team. In the third task, we divide the team into two groups: one group is asked to build a 3D tower, and another group is asked to build a 2D pattern in the middle of the 3D tower. This refers to two uneven and mutual-dependent stressful tasks performed by each of the two groups in the

Proceedings of the Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement - Sense and Sensitivity, DeSForM

The transitions of visualization are human controlled. The stress visualization of all the tasks started from the stressless visualization (S0). In Task 1, we keep the same visualization until the end. In Task 2, we switch the visualization from S0 to the even stress visualization (S1) after 1–1.5 minutes the task started without noticing the participants. Similarly, in Task 3, the visualization was switched unconsciously from S0 to the uneven stress visualization (S2) after 1–1.5 minutes the task started. The stages of visualization quietly and gradually transit without disturbing the participants. After all the three tasks were performed, an interview is

Static visualization: The static visualization brought peaceful feelings to most participants, and they reported that it has less interruption of their ongoing work. Half of the participants (4/8) mentioned that they like the feeling of the static pattern and it won't disturb their ongoing work. Comments from participants like "It looks nice. I like the natural feeling of irregular patterns than a digital one." "The thing I like more is it's different that I saw before. It's new, the material." "I can't imagine how comes up with this idea, the sand, the appearance looked more attractive." One participant (P1) commented "There's a lot of directions and lines, must indicate stress, is it?" "There's a lot of patterns over there so it's stress, but the flat one likes empty, so very peaceful." "This means half of us stressed and half are not stressed." "Right now it's all stressed!" One (P7) also mentioned "I realize this scene is much easier for me to understand the stress status." Most participants (6/8) described the influences of the static pattern to their internal activities. "I feel the flat pattern made me more relaxed compared with the striped one. Because it feels like some kind of scratches." "It has kinds of regulation, it reminds me meditation, like the Zen garden." Most participants (6/8) claimed that they can hardly associate the stress status with the static pattern without clarifying the announcement in the beginning. Since we intend to apply positive metaphors to visualize something negative in life, it is necessary to declare the initial intention of the expression in advance. Otherwise, the expressions will be too abstract to be accepted by the audiences. Overall, the feedback shows that the static visualization could help people adjust their inner peace through public display as a mean of visual intervention. The correlation between the visualization and the stress needs to be improved since most of them claimed that they did not feel connected to the

Dynamic visualization: People hold split opinions about the dynamic visualization. Part of them claimed that they like dynamic feedback, and they felt that it looks like real-time heart rate, while there are participants who also brought up that the quick changing shapes distract their attention in some way. Many participants (5/8) mentioned that the dynamic pattern

conducted to gather feedback from all participants.

team.

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**4.3. User feedback**

visualization in the first place.

The reactions and feedback gathered from the participants suggest the pros and cons of the two visualizations. Static visualization drives a peaceful and calmness status that attempt to balance users' inner peace, but it could be easily neglected. Dynamic visualization is more noticeable, but, meanwhile, it might produce unwanted interruption and disturbance. Constructive suggestions such as customization were also brought up. Some participants (4/16) mentioned that they expect to see the correlation between their individual stress statuses from the collective stress information. Alternative expressions in the visualization and different modalities of biofeedback as well as more applications of this visualization were also suggested in the interview.

### **5. Discussion**

The visualization mentioned herein can be provided based on the data collected from the calendar or schedule of a team with proper synchronization between the installation and the global time. However, to tailor the visual experiences as a more proactive and adaptive design intervention for teamwork, additional sensor data should be considered to give the feedback in better accuracy and responsiveness. We herein discuss the possible sensing extensions regarding reliability and scalability.

Regarding reliability, intrusive ways to sense organizational stress through HRV and EEG could be relatively stable and reliable indicators of stress. However, their original form appears to be not very practical in the context of teamwork, because everyone has to put on the device while working, and the device's form factors may negatively affect their working performances. Therefore, future research can consider developing wearable HRV and EEG devices in better forms, making them comfortable and even fashionable to be worn in daily lives and the workspaces to facilitating data collections.

Regarding scalability, nonintrusive sensing methods such as using cameras and computer vision techniques track the emotion of multiple workers by tracking their motion and facial expressions as stress indicators. A possible way to embed sensors is to use accessories that people need inevitably in their daily lives, such as designing biosensors as smart things (e.g., pillow, mirror), to minimize intrusions and distractions. The advantages are that multiple users can be tracked using a single device and the users require no instruments on their body. However, the downsides are that the users are constrained by the sensing range and it may raise privacy concerns. Hence, the physical form and the data collection mechanisms of the stress collectors should be carefully considered and designed.

Another scalable solution is to design social interaction platform for workers to report their stress situations and give suggestions to their peers easily. For example, when the atmosphere is getting uncomfortable, workers can quickly share their feelings through a platform, and the visualization will be pushed to the potential stressors' personal devices. In this case, no extra hardware deployment and maintenance costs are required because human beings can be considered as sensors of collective stress. This solution can also be considered in the immersive AR or VR applications because the visualization can be provided to the users' wearable displays.

### **6. Conclusion and future work**

This work presents *ClockViz*, an augmented reality installation applying static or dynamic projection overlays, which are designed to reflect collective stress through providing biofeedback visually. Both of the proposed static and dynamic visualizations can be applied in the environment as an ambient installation that expresses the collective stress information visually. The results of a pilot study with sixteen participants suggest that the visual information of collective stress status does have meaningful influences on participants. We also have discussed the sensing solutions, which may extend the proposed techniques toward more proactive and adaptive applications for interactive design interventions for coping with collective stress with time. Future work can consider investigating how the public visualization affects people's internal or external behaviors and how personalization and customization could be conducted in the next iterations. According to our literature review, there are no interactive interventions or empirical solutions in the context of collective stress. Hence, we believe that this research shed a light on a new direction that needs to be noticed and emphasized in the future research.

### **Author details**

Mengru Xue, Rong-Hao Liang, Jun Hu and Loe Feijs\* \*Address all correspondence to: l.m.g.feijs@tue.nl Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

### **References**

Regarding scalability, nonintrusive sensing methods such as using cameras and computer vision techniques track the emotion of multiple workers by tracking their motion and facial expressions as stress indicators. A possible way to embed sensors is to use accessories that people need inevitably in their daily lives, such as designing biosensors as smart things (e.g., pillow, mirror), to minimize intrusions and distractions. The advantages are that multiple users can be tracked using a single device and the users require no instruments on their body. However, the downsides are that the users are constrained by the sensing range and it may raise privacy concerns. Hence, the physical form and the data collection mechanisms of the

Proceedings of the Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement - Sense and Sensitivity, DeSForM

Another scalable solution is to design social interaction platform for workers to report their stress situations and give suggestions to their peers easily. For example, when the atmosphere is getting uncomfortable, workers can quickly share their feelings through a platform, and the visualization will be pushed to the potential stressors' personal devices. In this case, no extra hardware deployment and maintenance costs are required because human beings can be considered as sensors of collective stress. This solution can also be considered in the immersive AR or VR applications because the visualization can be provided to the users' wearable

This work presents *ClockViz*, an augmented reality installation applying static or dynamic projection overlays, which are designed to reflect collective stress through providing biofeedback visually. Both of the proposed static and dynamic visualizations can be applied in the environment as an ambient installation that expresses the collective stress information visually. The results of a pilot study with sixteen participants suggest that the visual information of collective stress status does have meaningful influences on participants. We also have discussed the sensing solutions, which may extend the proposed techniques toward more proactive and adaptive applications for interactive design interventions for coping with collective stress with time. Future work can consider investigating how the public visualization affects people's internal or external behaviors and how personalization and customization could be conducted in the next iterations. According to our literature review, there are no interactive interventions or empirical solutions in the context of collective stress. Hence, we believe that this research shed a light on a new direction that needs to be noticed and emphasized in the

stress collectors should be carefully considered and designed.

displays.

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future research.

**Author details**

Mengru Xue, Rong-Hao Liang, Jun Hu and Loe Feijs\*

Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

\*Address all correspondence to: l.m.g.feijs@tue.nl

**6. Conclusion and future work**

	- [15] Kempes M, De Vries H, Matthys W, Van Engeland H, Van Hooff J. Differences in cortisol response affect the distinction of observed reactive and proactive aggression in children with aggressive behaviour disorders. Journal of Neural Transmission. 2008;**115**(1):139-147
	- [16] Bouchard S, Bernier F, Boivin É, Morin B, Robillard G. Using biofeedback while immersed in a stressful videogame increases the effectiveness of stress management skills in soldiers. PLoS One. 2012;**7**(4):e36169
	- [17] Haneishi K, Fry AC, Moore CA, Schilling BK, Li Y, Fry MD. Cortisol and stress responses during a game and practice in female collegiate soccer players. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 2007;**21**(2):583-588
	- [18] Van Rooij M, Lobel A, Harris O, Smit N, Granic I. DEEP: A biofeedback virtual reality game for children at-risk for anxiety. In: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16 EA). 2016. p. 1989-1997
	- [19] Henriques G, Keffer S, Abrahamson C, Horst SJ. Exploring the effectiveness of a computer-based heart rate variability biofeedback program in reducing anxiety in college students. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback. 2011;**36**(2):101-112
	- [20] Yu B, Feijs L, Funk M, Hu J. Designing auditory display of heart rate variability in biofeedback context. In: Proceedings of 21st International Conference on Auditory Display. 2015. p. 294-298
	- [21] Bhandari R, Parnandi A, Shipp E, Ahmed B, Gutierrez-Osuna R. Music-based respiratory biofeedback in visually-demanding tasks. In: Proceedings of the 2015 international conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME '15). 2015. p. 78-82
	- [22] Gaggioli A, Pallavicini F, Morganti L, Serino S, Scaratti C, Briguglio M, Crifaci G, Vetrano N, Giulintano A, Bernava G, Tartarisco G. Experiential virtual scenarios with real-time monitoring (interreality) for the management of psychological stress: A block randomized controlled trial. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2014;**16**(7):e167
	- [23] Matthews M, Snyder J, Reynolds L, Chien JT, Shih A, Lee JW, Gay G. Real-time representation versus response elicitation in biosensor data. In: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). 2015. p. 605-608.
	- [24] Le Dantec CA. Design through collective action/collective action through design. ACM Interactions. 2016;**24**(1):24-30
	- [25] Lakoff G, Johnson M. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1980

**Provisional chapter**

### **Fuzzy Bird Helps Me Calm Down and Connect: Touch with Restraint in an Interactive Object for Children with Autism with Restraint in an Interactive Object for Children with Autism**

**Fuzzy Bird Helps Me Calm Down and Connect: Touch** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.71132

Stella Boess, Astrid Smoorenburg, Minsung Kim, Max Rijken, Thomas Latcham and Sophie Kelder Max Rijken, Thomas Latcham and Sophie Kelder Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Stella Boess, Astrid Smoorenburg, Minsung Kim,

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71132

#### **Abstract**

[15] Kempes M, De Vries H, Matthys W, Van Engeland H, Van Hooff J. Differences in cortisol response affect the distinction of observed reactive and proactive aggression in children with aggressive behaviour disorders. Journal of Neural Transmission.

Proceedings of the Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement - Sense and Sensitivity, DeSForM

[16] Bouchard S, Bernier F, Boivin É, Morin B, Robillard G. Using biofeedback while immersed in a stressful videogame increases the effectiveness of stress management skills in sol-

[17] Haneishi K, Fry AC, Moore CA, Schilling BK, Li Y, Fry MD. Cortisol and stress responses during a game and practice in female collegiate soccer players. Journal of Strength &

[18] Van Rooij M, Lobel A, Harris O, Smit N, Granic I. DEEP: A biofeedback virtual reality game for children at-risk for anxiety. In: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16 EA). 2016.

[19] Henriques G, Keffer S, Abrahamson C, Horst SJ. Exploring the effectiveness of a computer-based heart rate variability biofeedback program in reducing anxiety in college

[20] Yu B, Feijs L, Funk M, Hu J. Designing auditory display of heart rate variability in biofeedback context. In: Proceedings of 21st International Conference on Auditory Display.

[21] Bhandari R, Parnandi A, Shipp E, Ahmed B, Gutierrez-Osuna R. Music-based respiratory biofeedback in visually-demanding tasks. In: Proceedings of the 2015 international

[22] Gaggioli A, Pallavicini F, Morganti L, Serino S, Scaratti C, Briguglio M, Crifaci G, Vetrano N, Giulintano A, Bernava G, Tartarisco G. Experiential virtual scenarios with real-time monitoring (interreality) for the management of psychological stress: A block random-

[23] Matthews M, Snyder J, Reynolds L, Chien JT, Shih A, Lee JW, Gay G. Real-time representation versus response elicitation in biosensor data. In: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). 2015. p. 605-608.

[24] Le Dantec CA. Design through collective action/collective action through design. ACM

[25] Lakoff G, Johnson M. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1980

conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME '15). 2015. p. 78-82

ized controlled trial. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2014;**16**(7):e167

students. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback. 2011;**36**(2):101-112

2008;**115**(1):139-147

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78

p. 1989-1997

2015. p. 294-298

Interactions. 2016;**24**(1):24-30

diers. PLoS One. 2012;**7**(4):e36169

Conditioning Research. 2007;**21**(2):583-588

This paper explores the nascent concept of *touch with restraint* in the design of an interactive object. The design was developed to support children on the autism spectrum in social interaction and to facilitate a feeling of social connectedness. Throughout a constructive design case, the desired nature and interaction style of this interactive object emerged. An object that is characterized by *touch with restraint* facilitates adoption as a transitional object and mirrors passively and minimally the actions of a user. The design concept and prototype Fuzzy Bird showed the effectiveness of the concept in a user test. This strong concept contributes to the debate of how we come to live with interactive technologies, by drawing attention to the possibility of self-imposing limits on how much interactive technologies do and being respectful toward the human interactions they help facilitate.

**Keywords:** touch with restraint, autism, strong concept, constructive design research

### **1. Introduction**

This paper explores a nascent "strong concept" termed *touch with restraint* in the design of an object to support children on the autism spectrum in social interaction. A "strong concept" is at an intermediate level of knowledge between general theory and specific instances; it is constructed through generative design research and can be appropriated by designers and researchers to create new instances, concerns the dynamic, interactive behavior of design solutions, and resides at the interface between technology and people [1]. The strong concept

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Figure 1.** A user in interaction with the Fuzzy Bird prototype.

*touch with restraint* we propose here draws attention to minimal interactivity to be respectful toward the human interactions they help facilitate. The strong concept is explored in this paper through the case of Fuzzy Bird, a tangible interactive object that supports children with autism in involving themselves in social interaction (**Figure 1**).

### **2. Design and research challenges**

Meet Tommy (**Figure 2**). Opening up and connecting are hard for Tommy every day. Many of the one in 70–100 children diagnosed with autism like Tommy struggle to connect socially [2, 3]. We wanted to help Tommy dare to be more open in new and unexpected situations at home and outside the home, so he can feel more socially connected. Social self-exclusion arises from overwhelmedness [4]: it is a challenge for many children with autism to integrate many sensory impressions. They frequently withdraw or get stressed in social interaction. Yet, engaging socially is beneficial and desirable to them: "*social skill interventions are important to the successful outcomes of youth on the autism spectrum"* [5]. Focused interventions can help [6], as "*children with autism appear to behave based on the same mechanisms (e.g., reinforcement, punishment, extinction) that control the behavior of children without autism"* [7]. Interactive objects can address various conditions [4, 8–10]—could one enable Tommy to feel more socially connected? This project sought to develop a support for children with autism to engage in social interaction. The main design question we posed was: how can we facilitate social connection for children on the autistic spectrum? To address this question, we sought to answer the research question: what are the effects of specific interaction qualities of an interactive object on such children's ability to engage in social interaction?, as a contribution to the debate of how we live with interactive technology.

**Figure 2.** Tommy, a boy with autism (scenario of using Fuzzy Bird).
