Human eyes play an important role in everyday social interactions. However, the cues provided by eye movements are often missing or difficult to interpret in computer-mediated remote collaboration. Motivated by the increasing availability of gaze-tracking devices in the consumer market and the growing need for improved remotecollaboration systems, this thesis evaluated the value of gaze awareness in a number of video-based remote-collaboration situations.

This thesis comprises six publications which enhance our understanding of the everyday use of gaze-tracking technology and the value of shared gaze to remote collaborations in the physical world.The findings of this thesis can contribute towards designing future remote-collaboration systems; towards the vision of pervasive gaze-based interaction; and towards improved validity, repeatability, and comparability of research involving gaze trackers.

Touching in VR. Under review : Interacting with Computers

Abstract:

Abstract will be published after review.

Akkil et al. (2018) I See What You See: Gaze Awareness in Mobile Video Collaboration. In Proceedings of ETRA 2018

Abstract:

An emerging use of mobile video telephony is to enable joint activities and collaboration on physical tasks. We conducted a controlled user study to understand if seeing the gaze of a remote instructor is bene€cial for mobile video collaboration and if it is valuable that the instructor is aware of sharing of the gaze. We compared three gaze sharing con€gurations, (a) Gaze Visible where the instructor is aware and can view own gaze point that is being shared, (b) Gaze Invisible where the instructor is aware of the shared gaze but cannot view her own gaze point and (c) Gaze Unaware where the instructor is unaware about the gaze sharing, with a baseline of shared-mouse pointer. Our results suggests that naturally occurring gaze may not be as useful as explicitly produced eye movements. Further, instructors prefer using mouse rather than gaze for remote gesturing, while the workers also €nd value in transferring the gaze information.

Akkil et al. (2017) Gaze Awareness in Agent-Based Early-Childhood Learning Application. In proceedings of INTERACT 2017

Abstract:

Use of technological devices for early childhood learning is increasing. Now, kindergarten and primary school children use interactive applications on mobile phones and tablet computers to support and complement classroom learning. With increase in cognitive technologies, there is further potential to make such applications more engaging by understanding the user context. In this paper, we present the Little Bear, a gaze aware pedagogical agent, that tailors its verbal and non-verbal behavior based on the visual attention of the child and employs means to reorient the attention of the child, when distracted from the learning activity. We used the Little Bear agent in a learning application to enable teaching the vocabulary of everyday fruits and vegetables. Our user-study (n=12) with preschoolers shows that children interacted longer and showed improved shortterm retention of the vocabulary using the gaze aware agent compared to a baseline touch-based application. Our results demonstrate the potential of gaze aware application design for early childhood learning.

Akkil et al. (2016) User Expectations of Everyday Gaze Interaction on Smartglasses. In proceedings of Nordic CHI 2016

Abstract:

Gaze tracking technology is increasingly seen as a viable and practical input modality in a variety of everyday contexts, such as interacting with computers, mobile devices, public displays and wearables (e.g. smartglasses). We conducted an exploratory study consisting of six focus group sessions to understand people's expectations towards everyday gaze interaction on smartglasses. Our results provide novel insights into the role of use-context and social conventions regarding gaze behavior in acceptance of gaze interaction, various social and personal issues that need to be considered while designing gaze-based applications and user preferences of various gaze-based interaction techniques. Our results have many practical design implications and serve towards human-centric design and development of everyday gaze interaction technologies.

Akkil and Isokoski (2016) Accuracy of interpreting pointing gestures in egocentric view. In proceedings of Ubiquitous Computing 2016

Abstract:

Communicating spatial information by pointing is ubiquitous in human interactions. With the growing use of head-mounted cameras for collaborative purposes, it is important to assess how accurately viewers of the resulting egocentric videos can interpret pointing acts. We conducted an experiment to compare the accuracy of interpreting four different pointing techniques: hand pointing, head pointing, gaze pointing and hand+gaze pointing. Our results suggest that superimposing the gaze information on the egocentric video can enable viewers to determine pointing targets more accurately and more confidently. Hand pointing performed best when the pointing target was straight ahead and head pointing was the least preferred in terms of ease of interpretation. Our results can inform the design of collaborative applications that make use of the egocentric view.

Akkil and Isokoski (2016) Gaze augmentation in egocentric video improves awareness of intention. In proceedings of CHI2016

Abstract:

Video communication using head-mounted cameras could be useful to mediate shared activities and support collaboration. Growing popularity of wearable gaze trackers presents an opportunity to add gaze information on the egocentric video. We hypothesized three potential benefits of gaze-augmented egocentric video to support collaborative scenarios: support deictic referencing, enable grounding in communication, and enable better awareness of the collaborator’s intentions. Previous research on using egocentric videos for real-world collaborative tasks has failed to show clear benefits of gaze point visualization. We designed a study, deconstructing a collaborative car navigation scenario, to specifically target the value of gaze-augmented video for intention prediction. Our results show that viewers of gaze-augmented video could predict the direction taken by a driver at a four-way intersection more accurately and more confidently than a viewer of the same video without the superimposed gaze point. Our study demonstrates that gaze augmentation can be useful and encourages further study in real-world collaborative scenarios.

Akkil, James, Isokoski and Kangas (2016) GazeTorch: Enabling Gaze Awareness in Collaborative Physical Tasks. In extended abstracts CHI2016

Abstract:

We present GazeTorch, a novel interface that provides gaze awareness during remote collaboration on physical tasks. GazeTorch uses a spotlight to display gaze information of the remote helper on the physical task space of the worker. We conducted a preliminary user study to evaluate user’s subjective opinion on the quality of collaboration, using GazeTorch and a camera-only setup. Our preliminary results suggest that the participants felt GazeTorch made collaboration easier, made referencing and identifying of objects effortless, and improved the worker’s confidence that the task was completed accurately. We conclude by presenting some novel application scenarios for the concept of augmenting real-time gaze information in the physical world.

Akkil, D., Kangas, J., Rantala, J., Isokoski, P., Spakov, O., Raisamo, R. (2015) Glance awareness and gaze interaction in smartwatches. In extended abstracts CHI2016

Abstract:

Smartwatches are widely available and increasingly adopted by consumers. The most common way of interacting with smartwatches is either touching a screen or pressing buttons on the sides. However, such techniques require using both hands. We propose glance awareness and active gaze interaction as alternative techniques to interact with smartwatches. We will describe an experiment conducted to understand the user preferences for visual and haptic feedback on a "glance" at the wristwatch. Following the glance, the users interacted with the watch using gaze gestures. Our results showed that user preferences differed depending on the complexity of the interaction. No clear preference emerged for complex interaction. For simple interaction, haptics was the preferred glance feedback modality.

Akkil, D., Isokoski, P., Kangas, J., Rantala, J., Raisamo, R. (2015) TraQuMe: a tool for measuring the gaze tracking quality

Abstract:

Consistent measuring and reporting of gaze data quality is important in research that involves eye trackers. We have developed TraQuMe: a generic system to evaluate the gaze data quality. The quality measurement is fast and the interpretation of the results is aided by graphical output. Numeric data is saved for reporting of aggregate metrics for the whole experiment. We tested TraQuMe in the context of a novel hidden calibration procedure that we developed to aid in experiments where participants should not know that their gaze is being tracked. The quality of tracking data after the hidden calibration procedure was very close to that obtained with the Tobii's T60 trackers built-in 2 point, 5 point and 9 point calibrations.

Kangas, J., Akkil, D., Rantala, J., Isokoski, P., Majaranta, P., Raisamo, R. (2014) Gaze gestures and haptic feedback in mobile devices. In Proceedings of CHI2014

Abstract:

Anticipating the emergence of gaze tracking capable mobile devices, we are investigating the use of gaze as an input modality in handheld mobile devices. We conducted a study of combining gaze gestures with vibrotactile feedback. Gaze gestures were used as an input method in a mobile device and vibrotactile feedback as a new alternative way to give confirmation of interaction events. Our results show that vibrotactile feedback significantly improved the use of gaze gestures. The tasks were completed faster and rated easier and more comfortable when vibrotactile feedback was provided.

Rantala, J., Kangas, J., Akkil, D., Isokoski, P., Raisamo, R. (2014) Glasses with haptic feedback of gaze gestures. In extended abstracts CHI2014

Abstract:

We introduce eyeglasses that present haptic feedback when using gaze gestures for input. The glasses utilize vibrotactile actuators to provide gentle stimulation to three locations on the user's head. We describe two initial user studies that were conducted to evaluate the easiness of recognizing feedback locations and participants' preferences for combining the feedback with gaze gestures. The results showed that feedback from a single actuator was the easiest to recognize and also preferred when used with gaze gestures. We conclude by presenting future use scenarios that could benefit from gaze gestures and haptic feedback.