Deepak Akkil

Tampere University | UTA · School of Information Sciences

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 t...

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...

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...

Proper feedback is essential in gaze based interfaces, where the same modality is used for both perception and control. We measured how vibrotactile feedback, a form of haptic feedback, compares with the commonly used visual and auditory feedback in eye typing. Haptic feedback was found to produce results that are close to those of auditory feedbac...

The Low/High Index of Pupillary Activity (LHIPA), an eye-tracked measure of pupil diameter oscillation, is redesigned and implemented to function in real-time. The novel Real-time IPA (RIPA) is shown to discriminate cognitive load in re-streamed data from earlier experiments. Rationale for the RIPA is tied to the functioning of the human autonomic...

Kinesthetic interaction typically employs force-feedback devices for providing the kinesthetic input and feedback. However, the length of the mechanical arm limits the space that users can interact with. To overcome this challenge, a large control-display (CD) gain (>1) is often used to transfer a small movement of the arm to a large movement of th...

Kinaesthetic interaction using force-feedback devices is promising in virtual reality. However, the devices are currently not suitable for interactions within large virtual spaces because of their limited workspace. We developed a novel gaze-based kinaesthetic interface that employs the user’s gaze to relocate the device workspace. The workspace sw...

Remote collaboration on physical tasks is an emerging use of video telephony. Recent work suggests that conveying gaze information measured using an eye tracker between collaboration partners could be beneficial in this context. However, studies that compare gaze to other pointing mechanisms, such as a mouse-controlled pointer, in video-based colla...

Remote collaboration on physical tasks is an emerging use of video telephony. Recent work suggests that conveying gaze information measured using an eye tracker between collaboration partners could be beneficial in this context. However, studies that compare gaze to other pointing mechanisms, such as a mouse-controlled pointer, in video-based colla...

An emerging use of mobile video telephony is to enable joint activities and collaboration on physical tasks. Weconducted a controlled user study to understand if seeing the gaze of a remote instructor is beneficial for mobile video collaboration and if it is valuable that the instructor is aware of sharing of the gaze. We compared three gaze sharin...

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 underst...

Computing devices such as mobile phones and tablet computers are increasingly used to support early childhood learning. Currently, touching the screen is the most common interaction technique on such devices. To augment the current interaction experience, overcome posture-related issues with tablet usage and promote novel ways of engagement, we pro...

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 underst...

Vibrotactile feedback is widely used in mobile devices because it provides a discreet and private feedback channel. Gaze based interaction, on the other hand, is useful in various applications due to its unique capability to convey the focus of interest. Gaze input is naturally available as people typically look at things they operate, but feedback...

The best way to construct user interfaces for smart glasses is not yet known. We investigated the use of eye tracking in this context in two experiments. The eye and head movements were combined so that one can select the object to interact by looking at it and then change a setting in that object by turning the head horizontally. We compared three...

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...

mart glasses equipped with eye tracking technology could be utilized to develop natural interaction techniques. They could be used to conveniently interact with an electronic appliance in the environment from a distance. We describe a technique, HeadTurn, that allows a user to look at a device and then control it by turning the head to the left or...

Gaze gestures are a promising input technology for wearable devices especially in the smart glasses form factor because gaze gesturing is unobtrusive and leaves the hands free for other tasks. We were interested in how gaze gestures can be enhanced with vibrotactile feedback. We studied the effects of haptic feedback on the head and haptic promptin...

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...

Larger tablet computers are not always easy to use in handheld configurations. Gaze input and especially gaze gestures provide an alternative input technology in such situations. We investigated the task performance and user experience in gaze gesture use when haptic feedback was provided either to fingers touching the tablet or behind the ears thr...

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: s...

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 G...

In a study with 12 participants we compared two smooth pursuit based widgets and one dwell time based widget in adjusting a continuous value. The circular smooth pursuit widget was found to be about equally efficient as the dwell based widget in our color matching task. The scroll bar shaped smooth pursuit widget exhibited lower performance and low...

Smart glasses, like Google Glass or Microsoft HoloLens, can be used as interfaces that expand human perceptual, cognitive, and actuation capabilities in many everyday situations. Conventional manual interaction techniques, however, are not convenient with smart glasses whereas eye trackers can be built into the frames. This makes gaze tracking a na...

Wearable devices including smart eyewear require new interaction methods between the device and the user. In this paper, we describe our work on the combined use of eye tracking for input and haptic (touch) stimulation for output with eyewear. Input with eyes can be achieved by utilizing gaze gestures which are predefined patterns of gaze movements...

NordiCHI'14 conference attendees got hands-on experience with a number of great new interactive systems. Among the accepted poster, video, and demo submissions, we selected the following four prototypes to illustrate the high-quality design research displayed during the conference, which was held in Helsinki, Finland, October 26--30, 2014. Mikael W...

Wearable computing devices are gradually becoming common, and head-mounted devices such as Google Glass are already available. These devices present new interaction challenges as the devices are usually small in size, and also the usage environment sets limitations on the available interaction modalities. One potential interaction method could be t...

Haptic feedback can improve the usability of gaze gestures in mobile devices. However, the benefit is highly sensitive to the exact timing of the feedback. In practical systems the processing and trans-mission of signals takes some time, and the feedback may be delayed. We conducted an experiment to determine limits on the feedback delays. The resu...

Haptic feedback can improve the usability of gaze gestures in mobile devices. However, the benefit is highly sensitive to the exact timing of the feedback. In practical systems the processing and transmission of signals takes some time, and the feedback may be delayed. We conducted an experiment to determine limits on the feedback delays. The resul...

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...

In computer-mediated text-based synchronous communication such as online chatting, a difference in typing speed can have a significant effect on the quality of interaction. In this paper, we present an empirical user study in a modelled multitasking scenario in which the user has two main tasks: (1) finding answers to scripted questions in referenc...