Mobile navigation apps are among the most used mobile applications and are often used as a baseline to evaluate new mobile navigation technologies in field studies. As field studies often introduce external factors that are hard to control for, we investigate how pedestrian navigation methods can be evaluated in virtual reality (VR). We present a study comparing navigation methods in real life (RL) and VR to evaluate if VR environments are a viable alternative to RL environments when it comes to testing these. In a series of studies, participants navigated a real and a virtual environment using a paper map and a navigation app on a smartphone. We measured the differences in navigation performance, task load and spatial knowledge acquisition between RL and VR.From these we formulate guidelines for the improvement of pedestrian navigation systems in VR like improved legibility for small screen devices. We furthermore discuss appropriate low-cost and low-space VR-locomotion techniques and discuss more controllable locomotion techniques.

It is challenging to provide users with a haptic weight sensation of virtual objects in VR since current consumer VR controllers and software-based approaches such as pseudo-haptics cannot render appropriate haptic stimuli. To overcome these limitations, we developed a haptic VR controller named Triggermuscle that adjusts its trigger resistance according to the weight of a virtual object. Therefore, users need to adapt their index finger force to grab objects of different virtual weights. Dynamic and continuous adjustment is enabled by a spring mechanism inside the casing of an HTC Vive controller. In two user studies, we explored the effect on weight perception and found large differences between participants for sensing change in trigger resistance and thus for discriminating virtual weights. The variations were easily distinguished and associated with weight by some participants while others did not notice them at all. We discuss possible limitations, confounding factors, how to overcome them in future research and the pros and cons of this novel technology.

With the rise of COVID-19 cases globally, many countries released digital tools to mitigate the efects of the pandemic. In Germany the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) published the Corona-Data-Donation-App, a virtual citizen science (VCS) project, to establish an early warning system for the prediction of potential COVID-19 hotspots using data from wearable devices. While work on motivation for VCS projects in HCI often presents egoistic motives as prevailing, there is little research on such motives in crises situations. In this paper, we explore the socio-psychological processes and motivations to share personal data during a pandemic. Our fndings indicate that collective motives dominated among app reviews (n=464) and in in-depth interviews (n=10). We contribute implications for future VCS tools in times of crises that highlight the importance of communication, transparency and responsibility. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI; HCI design and evaluation methods; Human computer interaction (HCI); Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing.

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ZusammenfassungWearables unterstützen ihre Nutzer:innen in unterschiedlichen Kontexten. Dabei erzeugen und nutzen sie eine Vielzahl von oft sehr persönlichen (Gesundheits-)Daten, ohne dass Nutzer:innen über die notwendigen Kenntnisse und Erfahrungen verfügen, um reflektierte Entscheidungen über die Nutzung dieser Daten treffen zu können. In der aktuellen Forschung fehlen Konzepte, die einen unreflektierten Datenaustausch vermeiden und reflektierte Entscheidungen unterstützen. In diesem Beitrag diskutieren wir gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen der digitalen Souveränität und zeigen mögliche Wege der Visualisierung persönlicher (Gesundheits-)Daten und der Interaktion mit einem System, das transparente Informationen über die Nutzung von Wearable-Daten liefert. Wir zeigen Möglichkeiten zur Visualisierung rechtlicher und datenschutzrechtlicher Informationen auf und diskutieren unsere Ideen für einen erlebbaren Datenschutz mit Gamifizierungskonzepten. Die Bereitstellung interaktiver und visueller Datenräume kann die Fähigkeit zur eigenständigen Selbstbestimmung für Datenpreisgaben stärken.

Privacy Policies inform users about how their personal data is managed while fulfilling the obligatory requirements. Past studies have shown that users often do not read privacy policies, cannot comprehend the long and complex policy documents, and resort to providing their consent without knowledge. To enable users to make an informed decision, we explored serious games as a new medium to improve their understanding of privacy policies. In a mobile escape room game, users engage with the data collection and processing by solving different puzzles. We validated the game concept in a user study by comparing it to a conventional textual policy. Our findings show that the game promoted greater information recall in users. However, a trade-off seems to exist between frustration, duration and understanding. We show strategies for turning a privacy policy into game elements for a mobile escape room game and incorporating privacy information into different puzzles. We recommend that the choice of a privacy policy format should vary in a case-by-case scenario and should accommodate different target audiences.

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