Wearable digital technologies such as Augmented Reality glasses offer a unique platform not only for monitoring proxies of individual human behaviour data (e.g. eye and body limb movements, posture, location, skin conductivity) but also for affecting behaviour, as instances of persuasive technologies often used to achieve personal human goals, e.g. for integrating physical exercise into everyday life. For artificial computational systems to gracefully affect in-situ human behavior is however associated with several challenges. It requires carefully interfacing digital processes running on the wearable device(s) with biological processes taking place inside the human body (e.g. cognitive, perceptual, motoric). It also needs to work within the constraints of engineering viability, user experience, and ethical constraints. We present our initial attempts to synchronize human biological visual attention processes with eye tracking-based visual stimuli generation in two application domains: for counteracting racial discrimination in the assessment of job applications, and for facilitating assembly tasks. Characteristic for both approaches is that the persuasion is aimed at being completely unnoticeable, at least in the long-term. We then move on to initial ideas for a more general model for integrating perceptual and cognitive functions across the biological-digital border to optimize the system as a whole. More specifically, today’s AI architectures have a hard time achieving human-like high level cognition and perception which, we would argue, could potentially be addressed by a carefully designed symbiotic information exchange between existing human biological symbolic processes run inside the human brain with digital Machine Learning ones being tasked with the simpler sub-symbolic processing. Ethical concerns are, of course, also discussed including the potential reduction of “free will” and the consequences of system failure.  

Municipalities need to understand, analyse, plan, and manage a complex set of aspects so as to make the society safer, cleaner, more liveable, more equitable, more resilient. Working on climate and circular goals is challenging when the methodologies to implement these goals are not agile. However, recently, the use of agile methodologies and design thinking is getting recognized in public organizations, as municipalities.

In this small-scale pilot study, environmental quality in the infrastructure in the City of Trollhättan is considered as the main goal. The study aim to show how a rather radical shift in workflow can facilitate sustainable change in infrastructure design and maintenance, by relying heavily on a relatively small municipality’s self-designed, low cost, and data-driven agile process. Certain aspects found to be important are communication, stakeholders, selection of sensors, the agile process, decisions of places for sensors and data to collect, selection of sensors and visualization of data.

Inspection in Aerospace industry can, as well as many other industrial applications, benefit from using Augmented Reality (AR) due to its ability to superimpose helpful digital information in 3D, leading to fewer errors and decreased mental demand. However, each AR device has advantages and disadvantages, and not all AR devices are suitable for use in industrial settings. We compare a tripod-fitted-adjustable-arm tablet-based AR solution (Apple iPad Pro) to head-mounted AR (Microsoft HoloLens 2) and a traditional, computer screen-based human-machine interface (HMI), all three designed to guide operators based on previously performed AI-based image analysis. Following an iterative design process with three formative evaluations, a final field test in a real industrial shop floor engaging 6 professional inspectors revealed an overall preference for the tripod-fitted iPad variant which receiving the best scores in most dimensions covered in both a usability-focused SUS questionnaire (score 71) and a NASA-RTLX form focused on perceived workload. More specifically, the tripod-fitted iPad was considered more usable (SUS) than the classic computer display HMI (M=5.83, SD=4.92, p=0.034, N=6); the temporal demand (NASA-RTLX) was considered lower using the iPad compared to both HoloLens 2 and the HMI (M=6.67, SD=4.08, p=0.010; M=10.83, SD=9.70, p=0.040, N=6), respectively. 

Wooden-house assembly is an area where still a big part of the work is done manually. In this case study, pairs of operators compose large wooden pieces together based on paper-print instructions complemented by visual guidance in the shape of laser marks projected from lasers mounted in the ceiling, based on Computer-aided design (CAD) data. Augmented Reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMD) offer a unique platform for providing instructions and additional information superimposed in the work environment and thus can provide guidance in a cognitively ergonomic way. A particular advantage compared to other computing platforms is that the operators have free hands and can perform the manual work and follow guidance simultaneously. We present an evaluation of a prototype that dynamically transforms a CAD data file with design and measurements of wooden trusses to be manufactured, into an AR-based guidance system developed in Unity for Microsoft HoloLens 2 devices. We used an iterative participatory design process for prototyping and think-aloud protocol combined with observations for evaluation, involving professional assemblers in different stages of the process. Participants found the solution to potentially save time in their everyday work and simplify the task by offering increased visibility of the marks compared to the existing laser projection. Large-scale deployment of the system is still facing design challenges of which some are also discussed in the paper.  

The purpose of this paper is to explore how people’s differentiated privileged and marginalised positions in society create instances of inclusion and exclusion in tourism. Eight authors utilised their diverse disciplinary and theoretical bases to engage in individual autoethnography and collaborative reflections of their personal experiences of being tourists and hosts. Through our Western and non-Western, White and non-White experiences, we reveal experiences from a multitude of perspectives, and problematise the dominant White racial frame. The methodology illustrates unquestioned privileges and feelings of discomfort when personally faced with exclusionary practices and creates an understanding of how individuals have different experiences of enchantment and the tourist gaze. The experience of marginalisation is serial and dialectical, which illustrates the complexity of tourism. The paper contributes to an enhanced and multifaceted understanding of tourism experiences and proposes measures to reveal issues of exclusion. Also, the use of autoethnography and collaborative reflection as methodological tools provide opportunities for researchers and practitioners to engage in reflexive conversation on discriminatory practices, and how they hinder certain individuals and groups from enjoying tourism products and services.

Industrial manual assembly is a relatively established use case for emerging head-mounted Augmented Reality (AR) platforms: operators get visual support in placing pieces depending on where they are in the assembly process. However, is vision the only suitable sensory modality for such guidance? We present a systematic review of previous work done on multimodal guidance and subtle guidance approaches, confirming that explicit visual cues dominate. We then outline a three-step method for generating multisensory guidance ideas intended for real-world task support based on task observation that led to identification of 18 steps in truss assembly, brainstorming AR guidance approaches related to assembly and maintenance, and mapping of brainstorming results to the observed task. We illustrated the use of the method by deploying it on our current mission in producing AR guidance approaches for an industrial partner involved in designing and assembling wooden trusses. In this work, we went beyond the standard visual AR guidance in two ways, 1) by opening for guidance through auditory, tactile, and olfactory sensory channels, 2) by considering subtle guidance as alternative or complement to explicit information presentation. We presented a resulting set of multisensory guidance ideas, each tied to one of the 18 steps in the observed truss assembly task. To mention a few which we intend to investigate further: smell for gradual warning about non-imminent potential hazardous situations; 3D sound to guide operators to location of different tools; thermos-haptics for subtle notifications about contextual events (e.g., happening at other assembly stations). The method presented helped us to explore all modalities and to identify new possibilities. More work is needed to understand how different modalities can be combined and the impact of different modality distractions on task performance. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Augmented reality (AR) games are a rich environment for researching and testing computational systems that provide subtle user guidance and training. In particular computer systems that aim to augment a user’s situation awareness benefit from the range of sensors and computing power available in AR headsets. The main focus of this work-in-progress paper is the introduction of the concept of the individualized Situation Awareness-based Attention Guidance (SAAG) system used to increase humans’ situating awareness and the augmented reality version of the board game Carcassonne for validation and evaluation of SAAG. Furthermore, we present our initial work in developing the SAAG pipeline, the generation of game state encodings, the development and training of a game AI, and the design of situation modeling and eye-tracking processes. © 2022 Owner/Author.