Biography
Dr Shaun Alexander Macdonald is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow as an expert in HCI, affective and multimodal interaction, usable security, HRI as well as mixed methods and participatory study design and analysis. He received his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of Glasgow, for a project exploring affective touch using vibrotactile cues and their deployment as a calming intervention for social anxiety and has been published at top HCI venues like ICMI, CHI, TOCHI and USENIX Security. Following this he has worked as a researcher on several multi-disciplinary projects and has further published works on affective haptics, as well as on topics including usable security, thermal imaging, attacks, affective human-robot interaction, virtual reality and more, winning two paper awards. His research has been featured in numerous online outlets, print media and popular science television. Website: https://shaun-macdonald-hci.owlstown.net.
Talk: Evocative Vibes: How HRI Can Leverage Emotionally Resonant Vibrations
Abstract:
We stand at a point in time where high-fidelity haptic actuators are deployed on consumer-level devices, providing the motivation and opportunity to deploy affective and evocative haptic experiences on a mass scale and augment many application contexts. I will discuss how my
research provides a compelling example of this: expanding the range of immersive experiences and emotional responses that can be evoked using only a single vibrotactile actuator by using emotionally resonant vibrotactile stimuli’ that are simple to ideate and generate. While
traditionally vibrations have struggled to elicit emotional responses with a wide range of valence, emotionally resonant vibrations elicit a wider range of emotional responses by evoking real-world experiences with which the user may have an emotional association, such as cat purring, raindrops, crashing waves or a heartbeat. While this approach has been previously utilised to present affective soundscapes to calm users in healthcare settings, haptic cues can be applied to a greater variety of interfaces and scenarios. We explored a variety of stimuli, and how they might interact with other haptic modalities, such as texture and surface temperature, as well as explored the motivations and experiences of users with participatory prototyping and mixed methods analysis. We used these cues to provide calming interventions for socially anxious users during face-to-face social exposure, as they can be perceived discreetly without interrupting the core conversational faculties of speech, gaze and hearing. There is, however, also significant scope for how emotionally resonant stimuli could augment affective HRI. I will
discuss prominent examples, emerging work from our lab and the future applications I am most excited to see explored.
