Katherine Isbister

Alison Crosby, MJ Johns, Eunsol Sol Choi et al.

This paper presents a pilot study exploring the effects of an olfactory stimulus (smoke) for a Virtual Reality game designed to support wildfire evacuation preparedness. Participants (N=18) were split evenly into either a smoke or a control condition, and both completed the same evacuation task. Post-task surveys assessed the participants' perceived preparedness and overall experience. Initial findings suggest participants in the smoke condition reported significantly higher immersion compared to those in the control condition. Across both groups, participants expressed an increased sense of preparedness for real-world wildfire evacuations following the experience.

Katherine Isbister, Peter Cottrell, Alessia Cecchet et al.

We present a Research-through-Design case study of the design and development of an intimate-space tangible device perhaps best understood as a socially assistive robot, aimed at scaffolding children's efforts at emotional regulation. This case study covers the initial research device development, as well as knowledge transfer to a product development company towards translating the research into a workable commercial product that could also serve as a robust research product for field trials. Key contributions to the literature include: 1. sharing of lessons learned from the knowledge transfer process that can be useful to others interested in developing robust products, whether commercial or research, that preserve design values, while allowing for large scale deployment and research; 2. articulation of a design space in HCI/HRI--Human Robot Interaction--of intimate space socially assistive robots, with the current artifact as a central exemplar, contextualized alongside other related HRI artifacts.