A Scenario Generator for Evaluating the Social Acceptability of Emerging Technologies

In addition to functionality, usability and user experience, social acceptabilityis increasingly recognized as driver (or hindering factor) for the adoption of emerging interface technologies. In consequence, factors influencing social acceptance, the perception of technology usage in presence of other people – both, from the user’s and the by-stander’s points of view, has become of interest to researchers in Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). Social acceptance does not only depend on the considered device, but also on design aspects, e.g., input and output modalities, and social context, e.g., usage location or the user’s relationship to the bystanders. To investigate these factors, and how they interconnect, prior work made use of scenario visualizations, e.g., photographs, videos, or illustrations, whose creations is often time-consuming and labour-intensive. With SAGE, the Social Acceptability (Scenario) Generator and Evaluator, we present a tool that solves this issue by enabling semi-automatic generation of scenario illustrations for the purpose of evaluating the social acceptability of human-computer interfaces. Embedded into a website, SAGE facilitates evaluation, generation and export (download) of scenarios. Thus, it provides an infrastructure for onlineand offline scenario evaluation, which contributes to research efforts in the field of social acceptability of emerging technologies and novel interaction paradigms.