{"id":938721,"date":"2023-05-03T10:05:25","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T17:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T07:38:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T15:38:32","slug":"beyond-audio-towards-a-design-space-of-headphones-as-a-site-for-interaction-and-sensing","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/beyond-audio-towards-a-design-space-of-headphones-as-a-site-for-interaction-and-sensing\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Audio: Towards a Design Space of Headphones as a Site for Interaction and Sensing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via Research through Design (RtD), we explore the potential of headphones as a general-purpose input device for both foreground motion-gestures as well as background sensing of user activity. As a familiar wearable device, headphones offer a compelling site for head-situated interaction and sensing. Using emerging sensing modalities such as inertial motion, capacitive touch sensing, and depth cameras, our implemented prototypes explore sensing and interaction techniques that offer a range of compelling capabilities.<\/p>\n<p>User scenarios include context-aware privacy, gestural audio-visual control, and co-opting natural body language as context to drive animated avatars for &#8220;camera-off&#8221; scenarios in remote work\u2013or even to co-opt (oft-subconscious) head movements such as dodging attacks in video games to enhance the gameplay experience.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing from the literature and other frameworks, we situate our prototypes and related techniques in a design space across the dual dimensions of (1) type of input (touch, mid-air, or head orientation\/motion); and (2) the context of user action (application, body, or environment). In particular, interactions that combine multiple inputs and contexts at the same time offer a rich design space of headphone-situated wearable interactions and sensing techniques.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Research through Design (RtD), we explore the potential of headphones as a general-purpose input device for both foreground motion-gestures as well as background sensing of user activity. As a familiar wearable device, headphones offer a compelling site for head-situated interaction and sensing. Using emerging sensing modalities such as inertial motion, capacitive touch sensing, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":940875,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and\/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. DIS '23, July 10\u201314, 2023, Pittsburgh, PA, USA \u00a9 2023 Copyright is held by the owner\/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM 978-1-4503-9893-0\/23\/07\u2026$15.00 https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3563657.3596022 Payod Panda, Molly Jane Nicholas, David Nguyen, Eyal Ofek, Michel Pahud, Sean Rintel, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Ken Hinckley, and Jaron Lanier. 2023. Beyond Audio: Towards a Design Space of Headphones as a Site for Interaction and Sensing. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 904\u2013916. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3563657.3596022","msr_conference_name":"DIS'23: ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2023","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2023-7-1","msr_highlight_text":"Best Paper Award","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"https:\/\/dis.acm.org\/2023\/","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":null,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[246574],"research-area":[13554],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[248485],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-938721","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-research-highlight-award","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-locale-en_us","msr-field-of-study-human-computer-interaction"],"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2023-7-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"Best Paper Award","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/dis23-64-2.pdf","id":"950457","title":"dis23-64-2","label_id":"243132","label":0},{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3563657.3596022","label_id":"243106","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[{"id":950457,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/dis23-64-2.pdf"},{"id":940878,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Beyond_Audio__Headphones_as_Input-1.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Payod Panda","user_id":44104,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Payod Panda"},{"type":"text","value":"Molly Jane Nicholas","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"David Nguyen","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Eyal Ofek","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Michel Pahud","user_id":33007,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Michel Pahud"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sean Rintel","user_id":33579,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Sean Rintel"},{"type":"text","value":"Mar Gonzalez Franco","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Ken Hinckley","user_id":32521,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Ken Hinckley"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Jaron Lanier","user_id":32148,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Jaron Lanier"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[199561,199565],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[379814,1105932],"msr_project":[984894,937905,698833,483294],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":984894,"post_title":"Understanding Virtual &amp; 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