FROM INTERACTION TO EMPATHY:
NEW DIRECTIONS IN INTERFACE TECHNOLOGY
Mark Billinghurst
mark.billinghurst@unisa.edu.au
April 14th 2016
CHIuXiD 2016 Conference
Jakarta, Indonesia
How did that work?
How could I get a whole room of people clapping
together with no instruction?
Clear goal
Simple feedback
Well connected network
Everyone understood each other
Successful crowd-sourced behaviour
Computing Evolution
•  Change in interface over time -> new challenges for design
Interface Design for the Future
• Key topics
•  Feedback
•  Connected Networks
•  Shared Understanding
Single user
Connected communities
TRENDS IN TECHNOLOGY
Interaction Technology
Natural
Time
Punch
Card
Keyboard
Mouse
Speech
Gesture
Emotion
1950 1960 1980 1990 2000 2010
Thought
Physiological Sensing
Emotiv Empatica
Interaction Technology
Natural
Time
Punch
Card
Keyboard
Mouse
Speech
Gesture
Emotion
1950 1960 1980 1990 2000 2010
Thought
Implicit
Explicit
Content Capture
Realism
Time
Photo
Film
Live
Video
Panorama
360 Video
3D Space
1850 1900 1940 1990 2000 2010
3D Image/Space Capture
Google Project TangoSamsung Project Beyond
Content Capture
Realism
Time
Photo
Film
Live
Video
Panorama
360 Video
3D Space
1850 1900 1940 1990 2000 2010
2D Static
Immersive
Live
Experience
Networking Speeds
Log (b/s)
Time
100 b/s
10 Kb/s
1 Mb/s
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2010
100 Mb/s
2005
Network Innovation
Universal Connectivity
Networking Speeds
Log (b/s)
Time
100 b/s
10 Kb/s
1 Mb/s
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2010
100 Mb/s
2005
Text
Audio
Natural
Video
Holoportation
•  Augmented Reality + 3D capture + high bandwidth
•  http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/holoportation/
Holoportation Demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d59O6cfaM0
Natural
Collaboration
Implicit
Understanding
Experience
Capture
Natural
Collaboration
Implicit
Understanding
Experience
Capture
Empathic
Computing
EMPATHIC COMPUTING
Empathy
“Seeing with the Eyes of another,
Listening with the Ears of another,
and Feeling with the Heart of another..”
Alfred Adler
Empathic Computing
1. Understanding: Systems that can
understand your feelings and emotions
2. Experiencing: Systems that help you
better experience the world of others
3. Sharing: Systems that help you better
sharing the feelings of others
Understanding: Affective Computing
• Ros Picard – MIT Media Lab
• Systems that recognize emotion
Appliances That Make You Happy
• Jun Rekimoto – University of Tokyo/Sony CSL
• Smile detection + smart appliances
Happiness Counter Demo
https://vimeo.com/29169237
Experiencing: Virtual Reality
"Virtual reality offers a whole different
medium to tell stories that really connect
people and create an empathic connection."
Nonny de la Peña
http://www.emblematicgroup.com/
Hunger
•  Experience of homeless waiting in food line
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvXPP_0Ofzc
CHILDHOOD
•  Kenji Suzuki, University of Tsukuba
•  What does it feel like to be a child?
•  VR display + moved cameras + hand restrictors
CHILDHOOD Demo
https://vimeo.com/128641932
Sharing
Can we develop systems
that allow us to share what
we are seeing, hearing and
feeling with others?
•  sdfs
•  sdfgs
•  axcvxca
Using AR/Wearables for Empathy
• Remove technology barriers
• Enhance communication
• Change perspective
• Share experiences
• Enhance interaction in real world
Example: Google Glass
• Camera + Processing + Display + Connectivity
• Ego-Vision Collaboration (But with FixedView)
Current Collaboration onWearables
• First person remote conferencing/hangouts
• Limitations
•  Single POV, no spatial cues, no annotations, etc
Social Panoramas (ISMAR 2014)
• Capture and share social spaces in real time
• Supports independent views into Panorama
Reichherzer, C., Nassani, A., & Billinghurst, M. (2014, September). [Poster] Social panoramas using
wearable computers. In Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2014 IEEE International Symposium
on (pp. 303-304). IEEE.
Implementation
• Google Glass
• Capture live image panorama (compass + camera)
• Remote device (tablet)
• Immersive viewing, live annotation
User Interfaces
Glass View
Tablet View
Social Panorama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdC0-UV3hmY
Lessons Learned
• Good
• Communication easy and natural
• Users enjoy have view independence
• Sharing panorama enhances the shared experience
• Bad
• Difficult to support equal input
• Need to provide better awareness cues
CoSense (CHI 2015)
• Real time sharing - Emotion, video, and audio
• Wearable (send emotion) –> Desktop (remote view)
Google Glasse-Health 2.0 board
+
Ayyagari, S. S., Gupta, K., Tait, M., & Billinghurst, M. (2015, April). Cosense: Creating shared emotional
experiences. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in
Computing Systems (pp. 2007-2012). ACM.
Implementation
Data Capture
Feature Detection
Emotion Recognition
Emotion Representation
Empathic User Interface
Hardware
User
Interface
Wearable Interface
• Google Glass + e-Health + Spydroid + SSI
• Measure GSR, pulse oxygen, ECG, voice pitch
• Share video and audio remotely
• Representative emotions sent back to Glass user
!
!
Desktop Interface
CoSense Demo
Lessons Learned
• Good
• System was wearable
• Sender and receiver mirrored emotion
• Minimal cues provided best experience
• Bad
• System delays
• Need for good stimulus
• Difficult to represent emotion
Empathy Glasses (CHI 2016)
•  Combine together eye-tracking, display, face expression
•  Impicit cues – eye gaze, face expression
++
Pupil Labs Epson BT-200 AffectiveWear
Masai, K., Sugimoto, M., Kunze, K., & Billinghurst, M. (2016, May). Empathy Glasses. In Proceedings of
the 34th Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM.
AffectiveWear – Emotion Glasses
•  Photo sensors to recognize expression
•  User calibration
•  Machine learning
•  Recognizing 8 face expressions
Integrated System
• Local User
• Video camera
• Eye-tracking
• Face expression
• Remote Helper
• Remote pointing
System Diagram
•  Two monitors on Remote User side
•  Scene + Emotion Display
Empathy Glasses Demo
Lessons Learned
• Pointing really helps in remote collaboration
•  Makes remote user feel more connected
• Gaze looks promising
•  shows context of what person talking about
• More work needed on emotion/expression cues
• Limitations
•  Limited implicit cues
•  Two separate displays
•  Task was a poor emotional trigger
•  AffectiveWear needs improvement
FUTURE RESEARCH
Looking to the Future
Scaling Up
• Seeing actions of millions of users in the world
• Augmentation on city/country level
AR + Smart Sensors + Social Networks
• Track population at city scale (mobile networks)
• Match population data to external sensor data
• Mine data for applications
Example: MIT SENSEable City Lab
http://senseable.mit.edu/wikicity/rome/
Example: CSIRO WeFeel Tool
• Emotionally mining global Twitter feeds
• http://wefeel.csiro.au
CONCLUSION
Conclusions
• Empathic Computing
• Sharing what you see, hear and feel
• AR/Wearables Enables Empathic Experiences
• Removing technology
• Changing perspective
• Sharing space/experience
• Many directions for future research
www.empathiccomputing.org
@marknb00
mark.billinghurst@unisa.edu.au

From Interaction to Empathy