Jasmin Niess

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Oslo

Mobile navigation applications are good at providing efficient navigation instructions. However, they currently lack the capability to facilitate free exploration. Therefore, users are limited to encountering only places close to the shortest paths, neglecting places that could diversify navigation and foster spatial learning. To better understand...

Dark patterns are deceptive strategies that recent work in human-computer interaction (HCI) has captured throughout digital domains, including social networking sites (SNSs). While research has identified difficulties among people to recognise dark patterns effectively, few studies consider vulnerable populations and their experience in this regard...

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their caregivers face daily challenges which can adversely affect their well-being, especially regarding communication within their care ecosystems, comprising family, friends, educators, and therapists. To foster communication among children and their care ecosystem and support thei...

Adolescence is a period of growth and exploration, marked by influential relationships with peers and parents. These relationships are essential for teenagers' well-being, highlighting the need to support their interpersonal interactions. Emotional expression is key in resolving conflicts that can frequently arise. This paper investigates the poten...

People are increasingly eager to know more about themselves through technology. To date, technology has primarily provided information on our physiology. Yet, with advances in wearable technology and artificial intelligence, the current advent of consumer neurotechnology will enable users to measure their cognitive activity. We see an opportunity f...

Reflection is widely regarded as a key design goal for technologies for well-being. Yet, recent research shows that technologies for reflection may have negative consequences, in the form of rumination, i.e. negative thought cycles. Understanding how technologies support thinking about oneself, which can take the form of rumination and reflection,...

The modern workplace has been optimized towards increasing productivity, often at the cost of long-term worker wellbeing. This systemic issue has been acknowledged in both research and practice, but has not yet been solved. There is a notable lack of practical methods of incorporating physical activity and other wellbeing practices into productive...

Wearable personal trackers offer exciting opportunities to contribute to one's well-being, but they also can foster negative experiences. It remains a challenge to understand how we can design personal informatics experiences that help users frame their data in a positive manner and foster self-compassion. To explore this, we conducted a study wher...

Background: The terms health app and medical app are often used interchangeably but do not necessarily mean the same thing. To better understand these terms and better regulate such technologies, we need distinct definitions of health and medical apps. Objective: This study aimed to provide an overview of the definitions of health and medical apps...

Remote health monitoring (RHM) provides various benefits to older adults, but its use is still limited. Remote monitoring may help in avoiding emergencies and prolong users’ independence. To understand how to design systems which support older adults, we studied a large-scale remote health monitoring system. The system used fitness-grade smartwatch...

Human augmentation technologies (ATs) are a subset of ubiquitous on-body devices designed to improve cognitive, sensory, and motor capacities. Although there is a large corpus of knowledge concerning ATs, less is known about societal attitudes towards them and how they shift over time. To that end, we developed The Society's Attitudes Towards Human...

Playing together is crucial to the unique and invaluable bond between grandparents and grandchildren. However, co-located interactions and play can be limited due to time, distance, or pandemic-related restrictions. To facilitate distributed play, we developed MagiBricks, a system comprised of 3D-printed smart toy bricks and baseplates that provide...

While walking meetings offer a healthy alternative to sit-down meetings, they also pose practical challenges. Taking notes is difficult while walking, which limits the potential of walking meetings. To address this, we designed the Walking Talking Stick---a tangible device with integrated voice recording, transcription, and a physical highlighting...

Reflecting on personal challenges can be difficult. Without encouragement, the reflection process often remains superficial, thus inhibiting deeper understanding and learning from past experiences. To allow people to immerse themselves in and deeply reflect on past challenges, we developed SelVReflect, a VR experience which offers active voice-base...

This paper analyses Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature reviews to provide a clear conceptual basis for authors, reviewers, and readers. HCI is multidisciplinary and various types of literature reviews exist, from systematic to critical reviews in the style of essays. Yet, there is insufficient consensus of what to expect of literature revi...

The prospect of machine consciousness cultivates controversy across media, academia, and industry. Assessing whether non-experts perceive technologies as conscious, and exploring the consequences of this perception, are yet unaddressed challenges in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). To address them, we surveyed 100 people, exploring their conceptua...

Getting from A to B has never been easier. Mobile navigation systems allow universal access to spatial information. However, following detailed route instructions leads to a decrease in spatial exploration behaviour and therefore a reduction of spatial knowledge acquisition. Facilitating spatial exploration has the potential to counteract this nega...

Designing for children with ADHD has been of increasing interest to the HCI community. However, current approaches do not adequately involve all relevant stakeholders, and primarily focus on addressing symptoms, following a medical model of disability that is extrinsic to neurodivergent interests. To address this, we employed a multi-step, multi-st...

Depicting emotions, both in reality (e.g. art therapy) and in virtual reality (VR), is an established method for emotion regulation (ER), promoting reflection, behaviour change and mental well-being. However, the specific ways in which users engage with and process negative emotions in VR remains unclear. In this study, we conducted expert intervie...

Although interactive technologies increasingly shape teamwork, their relationship with team effectiveness (inputs, processes, emergent states, and outputs) remains unclear. To provide an overview of this relationship, we systematically reviewed empirical articles from Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). To...

While walking meetings offer a healthy alternative to sit-down meetings, they also pose practical challenges. Taking notes is difficult while walking, which limits the potential of walking meetings. To address this, we designed the Walking Talking Stick -- a tangible device with integrated voice recording, transcription, and a physical highlighting...

Personal tracking devices are equipped with more and more sensors and offer an ever-increasing level of accuracy. Yet, this comes at the cost of increased complexity. To deal with that problem, fitness trackers use derived metrics---scores calculated based on sensor data, e.g. a stress score. This means that part of the agency in interpreting healt...

The terms health app and medical app are often used interchangeably but do not necessarily mean the same. Medical apps can be regulated as mobile medical devices and therefore need to meet general safety and performance requirements. On the contrary, health apps are not part of this legal framework and do not need proof of their efficacy or guarant...

Physical activity is entering the virtual realm. Zwift is an at-home cycling system that is enjoying increasing popularity, yet the specifics of the experience of a virtual cyclist have not been studied to date. Building virtual sports systems can make physical activity accessible to more diverse user groups. To understand how and why users engage...

Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly being used to promote mind- fulness practice. However, the impact of virtual and multimodal interactive spaces on mindfulness practice and presence is still un- derexplored. To address this gap, we conducted a mixed-method user study (𝑁 =12). We explored the impact of various multimodal feedback, in particular t...

Background: The terms health app and medical app are often used interchangeably but do not necessarily mean the same. To better understand these terms and better regulate such technologies, we need distinct definitions of health and medical apps. Therefore, this paper aims to overview definitions for health and medical apps from an interdisciplina...

A variety of technologies are being developed to help older people live healthier, more independent, and safer lives, for longer. While many of these technologies are positively impacting the lives of older adults, they also have the potential to dictate specific behaviours or restrict their autonomy rather than empower them. The vulnerability theo...

ADHD is the most prevalent mental health diagnosis in children. However, little is understood about how the increasing number of technologies developed actually support them. Coupled with the inherent complexities related to designing for children with mixed abilities, and the number of stakeholders involved in their everyday experiences, the need...

This paper presents a systematic review of HCI literature focusing on children with ADHD, the prevailing mental health diagnosis in children. Its aim is to (i) chart the state-of-the-art in this domain (e.g. methods used), (ii) identify the ways the HCI community has addressed the needs of children with ADHD (e.g. technologies deployed), and (iii)...

There is a recommended body posture and hand position for playing every musical instrument, allowing efficient and quick movements without blockage. Due to humans' limited cognitive capabilities, they struggle to concentrate on several things simultaneously and thus sometimes lose the correct position while playing their instrument. Incorrect posit...

ADHD is the most prevalent mental health diagnosis in children. Yet, little is understood about how the increasing number of technologies developed actually support their needs. Hence, our goal is to build an understanding of the design space of technologies for children with ADHD. This is, however, complex due to the number of stakeholders involve...

Research in human–computer interaction (HCI) has identified meaning as an important, yet poorly understood concept in interaction design contexts. Central to this development is the increasing emphasis on designing products and technologies that promote leisure, personal fulfillment, and well-being. As spaces of profound historical significance and...

Reflection is a commonly addressed design goal in commercial systems and in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. Yet, it is still unclear what tools are at the disposal of designers who want to build systems that support reflection. Understanding the design space of reflection support systems and the interaction techniques that can foster ref...

Immersive interactive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) have the potential to foster well-being. While VR applications have been successfully used to evoke positive emotions through the presetting of light, colour and scenery, the experiential potential of allowing users to independently create a virtual environment (VE) has not yet been su...

Traditional meetings involve extensive sitting, which negatively impacts the health of attendees. Understanding how technology can facilitate integrating physical activity into the workplace, such as in walking meetings, is vital to improving workplace wellbeing. To that end, we applied a mixed-method approach to explore requirements and opportunit...

Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) is a steadily growing field that focuses on children as a prominent and emergent user group. For more than twenty years, the Interaction Design for Children (IDC) community has developed, extended, and advanced research and design methods for children’s involvement in designing and evaluating interactive technologie...

Interactive technologies for autonomous mental health management are on the rise due to limited therapy access and stigma. However, most commercial mental health apps are neither theory-based nor clinically tested, and psychological theories are not easily accessible to app designers. Thus, it remains unclear if current mobile and VR mental health...

Enabling neurodiverse children to have control of their surrounding space could improve their well-being by allowing them to adapt it to their needs. Intelligent Environments (IEs) are now part of our everyday lives. For example, smart homes are already a reality and there is an abundance of tools that enable even non-technical users to define thei...

Supporting interpersonal connectedness and playful activities between users of different ages offers many well-being benefits. Novel interactive artifacts such as smart toys can help to foster connectedness and encourage play even when being geographically apart. Playing, both with peers and older individuals constitutes the most important activity...

As digital cultural collections become increasingly sophisticated in their scope and functionality, there is a need to build an in-depth understanding concerning the information behaviors of users in this new domain. Research has demonstrated that many digital museum visitors are engaged in casual leisure during exploration of a collection, suggest...

There has been increasing interest in socially just use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in the development of technology that may be extended to marginalized people. However, the exploration of such technologies entails the development of an understanding of how they may increase and/or counter marginalization. The use of...

Interactive technologies are getting closer to our bodies and permeate the infrastructure of our homes. While such technologies offer many benefits, they can also cause an initial feeling of unease in users. It is important for Human-Computer Interaction to manage first impressions and avoid designing technologies that appear creepy. To that end, w...

Reflection is an often addressed design goal in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. An increasing number of artefacts for reflection have been developed in recent years. However, evaluating if and how an interactive technology helps a user reflect is still complex. This makes it difficult to compare artefacts (or prototypes) for reflection,...

Interactive technologies are getting closer to our bodies and permeate the infrastructure of our homes. While such technologies offer many benefits, they can also cause an initial feeling of unease in users. It is important for Human-Computer Interaction to manage first impressions and avoid designing technologies that appear creepy. To that end, w...

With the rise of COVID-19 cases globally, many countries released digital tools to mitigate the effects 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 we...

The emergence of affordable consumer drones promises new perspectives for interacting with the physical world around us. Affordable, accessible, and easy to operate drones have the potential to overcome geographic boundaries between users living in different locations and subsequently foster connectedness. Yet, the design space of using drones to f...

The emergence of affordable consumer drones promises new perspectives for interacting with the physical world around us. Affordable, accessible, and easy to operate drones have the potential to overcome geographic boundaries between users living in different locations and subsequently foster connectedness. Yet, the design space of using drones to f...

As an increasing number of interactive devices offer human-like assistance, there is a growing need to understand the human experience of interactive agents. When interactive artefacts with human-like features become intertwined in our everyday experience, we need to make sure that they assume the right roles and contribute to our wellbeing. In thi...

Persuasive technologies to support behaviour change (e.g., fitness trackers) have become increasingly popular among consumers and healthcare providers. However, studies show that such technologies often fail to offer long-term engagement and tangible health benefits. In this regards, the specific design of persuasive messages provided by the device...

Digital assistant technologies are becoming increasingly common at home. These technologies also hold high potential through supporting individuals at work. However, it remains a challenge for research to understand which psychological features should be embodied by digital assistant technologies so that they can become meaningful everyday companio...

While gamification is an often used tool in building interactive experiences for sports, little work has addressed systems designed by users for users and deeply embedded in the social setting of physical exercise. Consequently, a better understanding of sports gamification in the wild is needed to build systems that reflect the users' pre-existing...

While the number of users sporting fitness trackers is constantly increasing, little is understood about how tracking goals can evolve over time. As recent studies have shown that the long-term health effects of trackers are limited, we need to readdress how trackers engage users. We conducted semi-structured interviews and an online survey to expl...

Die Qualität der Kommunikation ist ein zentraler Erfolgsfaktor für nachhaltige Kundenbeziehungen und Kundenprojekte. Projekt- und Kundenbeziehungsmanagement-Systeme versprechen Unterstützung, indem sie relevante Daten verwalten sowie Prozesse und Analysen automatisieren. Dies geht jedoch an den tatsächlichen Problemen von Kommunikation und Beziehun...

Background: Interactive products for self-improvement (e.g., online trainings to reduce stress, fitness gadgets) have become increasingly popular among consumers and healthcare providers. In line with the idea of positive computing, these tools aim to support their users on their way to improved well-being and human flourishing. As an interdiscipl...

Immer häufiger werden interaktive Produkte genutzt, um den Wunsch nach Selbstverbesserung und der damit einhergehenden Steigerung des Wohlbefindens zu unterstützen. Ein wichtiger Faktor für die Akzeptanz von Selbstverbesserungstechnologien scheint die Kommunikation zwischen Mensch und Produkt zu sein. Um diesen Dialog bewusst zu gestalten, muss in...

Technologies for self-improvement (e.g., fitness gadgets, nutrition apps) take an increasingly important role within the field of persuasive technology. Technology enters the role of a well-being coach, supporting people in the achievement of personal goals and behavior change. The present research explores the notion that just like in face-to-face...

Immer häufiger werden interaktive Produkte Unterstützer von Selbstverbesserung (z.B. Ernährungs-Apps, Fitness-Gadgets) und übernehmen damit eine verantwortungsvolle Rolle. Es scheint jedoch, dass Technikgestaltung und Psychologie hier noch nicht optimal verzahnt sind und der "therapeutische Dialog" zwischen Produkt und Nutzer mehr Beachtung finden...