The Unconventional Interaction Library: Tackling the Use of Physiological Interaction Modalities

Collaborative environments possess highly competitive settings not only from an individual’s perspective, but also from the whole group’s point-of-view. It starts becoming necessary to assess what makes users feel more compelled to collaborate with each other in such settings as well as identifying key interactive patterns which affect their behaviors. This assessment is becoming more and more possible with the introduction of physiological interaction modalities in recent years. These unconventional interaction mechanisms allow for the detection of otherwise invisible body signals, such as pulse or skin conductance levels, and incorporate them as input or output modalities in everyday applications. It has been proven that some of these body signals express users’ feelings and emotions while interacting in individual or group settings. This paper presents an initial approach and architecture towards the use of this type of interfaces in the aforementioned settings.