| A Framework to Develop VR Interaction Techniques Based on OpenInterface and AFreeCA | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-18 | |
| Diego Martínez; J-Y. Lionel Lawson; José P. Molina; Arturo S. García; Pascual González; Jean Vanderdonckt; Benoit Macq | |||
| Implementing appropriate interaction for Virtual Reality (VR) applications
is one of the most challenging tasks that a developer has to face. This
challenge is due to both technical and theoretical factors. First, from a
technical point of view, the developer does not only have to deal with
non-standard devices, he has to facilitate their use in a parallel a
coordinated way, interweaving the fields of 3D and multimodal interaction.
Secondly, from a theoretical point of view, he has to design the interaction
almost from scratch, as a standard set of interaction techniques and
interactive tasks has not been identified. All these factors are reflected in
the absence of appropriate tools to implement VR interaction techniques. In
this paper, some existing tools that aim at the development of VR interaction
techniques are studied, analysing their strengths and, more specifically, their
shortcomings, such as the difficulties to integrate them with any VR platform
or their absence of a strong conceptual background. Following that, a framework
to implement VR interaction techniques is described that provides the required
support for multimodal interaction and, also, uses experience gained from the
study of the former tools to avoid previous mistakes. Finally, the usage of the
resulting framework is illustrated with the development of the interaction
techniques of a sample application. Keywords: Novel User Interfaces and Interaction Techniques; Tools for Design;
Modelling; Evaluation; Multimodal interfaces; Virtual Reality | |||
| Exploring Interaction Strategies in the Context of Sleep | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 19-36 | |
| Dzmitry Aliakseyeu; Jia Du; Elly Zwartkruis-Pelgrim; Sriram Subramanian | |||
| This paper highlights opportunities and considerations when developing
interaction techniques in the relatively unexplored area of sleep. We do this
by first describing the sociological aspects of sleep such as the need for
scheduling and coordinating sleep within a collective, followed by a
description of the physiological aspects such as the circadian rhythm and sleep
stages. We then examine how some external factors like the location of sleep
and family settings can affect sleep to highlight potential design
opportunities. We finish the paper by describing five distinct themes such as
scheduling for a collective, supporting sleep transitions and feigning and
inhibiting sleep around which design opportunities are explored. The main
contribution of this paper is a discussion on the phenomenon of sleep and its
position in the social life to provide a rich understanding of sleep and a set
of opportunities for interaction design research around sleep. Keywords: Sleep; interaction design; sleep quality; bedroom context | |||
| FeetUp: A Playful Accessory to Practice Social Skills through Free-Play Experiences | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 37-44 | |
| Andrea Rosales; Ernesto Arroyo; Josep Blat | |||
| In this paper we describe the design process of an interactive accessory to
play anywhere and anytime while encouraging free-play and practice social
skills. We explain the design process, the resulting conceptual design of
FeetUp and the preliminary user's evaluation. FeetUp is a playful accessory
that takes advantage of children's interest to jump, or perform body stunts.
These activities generally include lifting both feet, and FeetUp gives
audiovisual feedback whenever this happens to encourage free-play related with
jump activities. Preliminary user's experience shows how FeetUp, encourages
freeplay. Keywords: free-play; children; playful; augmented technologies; social interaction;
wearable | |||
| Designing Snakey: A Tangible User Interface Supporting Well Path Planning | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 45-53 | |
| John Harris; James Young; Nicole Sultanum; Paul Lapides; Ehud Sharlin; Mario Costa Sousa | |||
| We present our ongoing design of Snakey, a tangible user interface (TUI)
dedicated to the field of reservoir geosciences and engineering. Our design of
Snakey emphasizes intuitive manipulation and interaction with 3D curves, common
to underground well path exploration and planning. Snakey is not designed to
replace the traditional CAD reservoir well path planning tools, but rather to
augment them with tangible and collaborative interaction, facilitating spatial
exploration during the multi-stage planning processes involved in well path
design. Our short paper presents design goals and prototyping solutions
relating to Snakey's physicality, sensing technology, input/output mapping, and
multi-modal feedback, as well as our findings from a preliminary evaluation of
the latest Snakey prototype in a design critique session by experienced
reservoir engineers. Keywords: Well path planning; Tangible user interfaces (TUIs); physical interaction;
real-time 3D curve manipulation; interactive visualization techniques;
reservoir and geosciences engineering | |||
| OP: A Novel Programming Model for Integrated Design and Prototyping of Mixed Objects | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 54-72 | |
| Céline Coutrix; Laurence Nigay | |||
| In the context of mixed systems that seek to smoothly merge physical and
digital worlds, designing and prototyping interaction involves physical and
digital aspects of mixed objects. However, even though mixed objects are
recurrent in the literature, none of the existing prototyping tools explicitly
supports this object level. Moreover, designers have to use distinct tools, on
the one hand, tools for designing ideas and on the other hand tools for
prototyping them: this makes the design process difficult. To help alleviate
these two problems, we present OP (Object Prototyping), a toolkit that provides
a new programming model focusing on mixed objects and allows us to seamlessly
go back and forth from conceptual ideas to functional physical prototypes,
making the iterative design process smooth and integrated. Indeed, OP is
explicitly based on an existing conceptual design model, namely the Mixed
Interaction Model that has been shown to be useful for exploring the design
space of mixed objects. Our user studies show that, despite its threshold,
designers and developers using OP can rapidly prototype functional physical
objects as part of a design process deeply intertwining conceptual design with
prototyping activities. Keywords: Prototyping; Toolkit; Mixed Systems; Mixed Objects; Augmented Reality;
Physical User Interfaces; Tangible User Interfaces; Design | |||
| A Personal Approach: The Persona Technique in a Companion's Design Lifecycle | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 73-90 | |
| Joana Campos; Ana Paiva | |||
| Artificial companions are a new type of technology that is changing the way
people interact with intelligent systems, by trying to build and sustain long
term relationships with users. To evaluate such systems the typical usability
methods for system evaluation are not enough, due to the need of accessing
aspects such as social behaviour, emotional sensitivity and personalized
interaction over long periods of time, with very specific users. In this paper,
we describe the (full) design cycle of a companion system, arguing that a
user-centred approach is the more appropriate, taking into account the referred
specific issues. As such, to help us focus on developing a companion system for
the prospective users, we based our design in the archetype of actual users --
a persona. Furthermore, we brought this same concept into the evaluation phase
in order to access the companion performance in a long-term interaction. Keywords: Companion design; persona; companion evaluation; long-term | |||
| Emotive Expression through the Movement of Interactive Robotic Vehicles | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 91-99 | |
| Eric Kryski; Ehud Sharlin | |||
| In this paper, we discuss our on going design of interactive personal
vehicles that exhibit behavioral constructs expressed through motion in order
to improve the user's commuting experience. The behavioral, personality-like
traits demonstrated by the interactive vehicles are intended to be useful and
helpful, as well as to stretch beyond the effectiveness into affect and
emotion, creating an overall more satisfying experience for the user. This
short paper presents our design goals and approach, describes the evolution of
the implementation of our personal vehicle prototypes, and outlines our current
preliminary design critique evaluation findings. Keywords: Social human-robot interaction (HRI); Vehicle personality; Emotional
expression through motion | |||
| Evaluation of an Integrated Paper and Digital Document Management System | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 100-116 | |
| Matthew Jervis; Masood Masoodian | |||
| Paper documents are still an integral component of our everyday working
lives, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Fortunately,
advances in electronic technology in recent years have made it possible to
develop digital systems that better integrate paper and digital document
management. However, as far as we are aware, none of these integrated document
management systems have been evaluated to demonstrate whether the users would
indeed find them valuable for managing paper documents. In this paper we
present a user study of one such system, called SOPHYA, that provides a means
of linking the management of real world document artefacts (e.g., folders) with
their electronic counterparts, so that document management activities such as
locating, retrieving, and filing documents can be better supported, especially
for large collections. The study is in the form of a laboratory-based
evaluation, in which participants with experience in document management used
the system to perform several tasks, such as locating and retrieving folders,
and provided feedback based on their own experience. The results of this study
show that users are able to apply software functionality they use for storage
and retrieval of electronic documents to effectively manage paper documents as
well. Our study has also identified a range of other potential benefits that
the users envisage for such a technology in their diverse work environments. Keywords: Document management; paper documents; electronic documents; digital
documents; tangible interfaces; evaluation | |||
| BendFlip: Examining Input Techniques for Electronic Book Readers with Flexible Form Factors | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 117-133 | |
| Doug Wightman; Tim Ginn; Roel Vertegaal | |||
| We present recommendations for the design of flexible electronic book
readers, based on an empirical evaluation of form factors and input techniques
in a page navigation task. We compared capacitive touch, pressure, and bend
sensors between rigid and flexible form factors using a prototype electronic
book reader. Results suggest that the time required to perform bend techniques
is comparable to button techniques for page navigation on flexible form
factors. We also found that a bend technique had fewer errors on flexible form
factors. We discuss the physical affordances of flexible e-book form factors,
and why they might be preferable to rigid designs. We conclude by presenting
recommendations for the design of future flexible e-book readers. Keywords: Flexible displays; electronic book readers; bimanual input | |||
| Who's That Girl? Handheld Augmented Reality for Printed Photo Books | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 134-151 | |
| Niels Henze; Susanne Boll | |||
| Augmented reality on mobile phones has recently made major progress.
Lightweight, markerless object recognition and tracking makes handheld
Augmented Reality feasible for new application domains. As this field is
technology driven the interface design has mostly been neglected. In this paper
we investigate visualization techniques for augmenting printed documents using
handheld Augmented Reality. We selected the augmentation of printed photo books
as our application domain because photo books are enduring artefacts that often
have online galleries containing further information as digital counterpart.
Based on an initial study, we designed two augmentations and three techniques
to select regions in photos. In an experiment, we compare an augmentation that
is aligned to the phone's display with an augmentation aligned to the physical
object. We conclude that an object aligned presentation is more usable. For
selecting regions we show that participants are more satisfied using simple
touch input compared to Augmented Reality based input techniques. Keywords: augmented reality; mobile phone; photo sharing; mobile interaction; image
analysis; photo book | |||
| Looking for "Good" Recommendations: A Comparative Evaluation of Recommender Systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 152-168 | |
| Paolo Cremonesi; Franca Garzotto; Sara Negro; Alessandro Vittorio Papadopoulos; Roberto Turrin | |||
| A number of researches in the Recommender Systems (RSs) domain suggest that
the recommendations that are "best" according to objective metrics are
sometimes not the ones that are most satisfactory or useful to the users. The
paper investigates the quality of RSs from a user-centric perspective. We
discuss an empirical study that involved 210 users and considered seven RSs on
the same dataset that use different baseline and state-of-the-art
recommendation algorithms. We measured the user's perceived quality of each of
them, focusing on accuracy and novelty of recommended items, and on overall
users' satisfaction. We ranked the considered recommenders with respect to
these attributes, and compared these results against measures of statistical
quality of the considered algorithms as they have been assessed by past studies
in the field using information retrieval and machine learning algorithms. Keywords: Recommender systems; quality metrics; user study | |||
| All the News That's Fit to Read: Finding and Recommending News Online | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 169-186 | |
| Juha Leino; Kari-Jouko Räihä; Sanna Finnberg | |||
| Our survey study of 147 Finns shows that online news is becoming the most
important news source today: Online newspapers have bypassed paper newspapers
and also TV and radio in importance, especially among young adults. Although
most respondents routinely visited their preferred news sites directly,
recommendations from their social network also played an important role in
helping them find salient news. We analyzed the factors that affected which
recommendations were read and why, and also discuss participants' expectations
on the behavior of the receivers of the recommendations. The person
recommending and the means of recommending affect what gets read. In contrast
with previous studies, we found that the role of email as a recommendation tool
is decreasing as the use of social media is becoming more common. However,
personally targeted recommendations still have a better chance of being
influential than recommendations made to the public at large. Keywords: News; recommending; sociality; online | |||
| Helping Users Sort Faster with Adaptive Machine Learning Recommendations | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 187-203 | |
| Steven M. Drucker; Danyel Fisher; Sumit Basu | |||
| Sorting and clustering large numbers of documents can be an overwhelming
task: manual solutions tend to be slow, while machine learning systems often
present results that don't align well with users' intents. We created and
evaluated a system for helping users sort large numbers of documents into
clusters. iCluster has the capability to recommend new items for existing
clusters and appropriate clusters for items. The recommendations are based on a
learning model that adapts over time -- as the user adds more items to a
cluster, the system's model improves and the recommendations become more
relevant. Thirty-two subjects used iCluster to sort hundreds of data items both
with and without recommendations; we found that recommendations allow users to
sort items more rapidly. A pool of 161 raters then assessed the quality of the
resulting clusters, finding that clusters generated with recommendations were
of statistically indistinguishable quality. Both the manual and assisted
methods were substantially better than a fully automatic method. Keywords: Mixed initiative interactions; adaptive user interfaces; information
interfaces; interactive clustering; machine learning | |||
| Sharing Ephemeral Information in Online Social Networks: Privacy Perceptions and Behaviours | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 204-215 | |
| Bernardo Reynolds; Jayant Venkatanathan; Jorge Gonçalves; Vassilis Kostakos | |||
| This paper presents a study where the online Facebook practices of a sample
of users (n=103) was analysed over a period of two years, via the scraping of
data in Facebook and the collection of questionnaire data. The data allows for
a contrast between implicit and explicit attitudes regarding Facebook and
online sharing. Our analysis reveals that while overall privacy concerns are
not reflected in posting behaviour, awareness and familiarity with privacy
controls is. This is supported by contrasting users' attitudes regarding
day-to-day sharing against actual behaviour on Facebook. We theorise that there
exists a failure in translating users' privacy needs into a social-technical
environment such as social networking sites. This work demonstrates how aspects
such as demographics and usage influence and shape users' behaviour and
practices towards privacy. We therefore argue that the factorization of these
aspects may augment the translation of users' privacy needs and improve the
design of privacy sensitive mechanisms for day-to-day information sharing. Keywords: Social media; sharing; privacy | |||
| An Investigation into Facebook Friend Grouping | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 216-233 | |
| Patrick Gage Kelley; Robin Brewer; Yael Mayer; Lorrie Faith Cranor; Norman Sadeh | |||
| With increasingly large friend networks, Facebook users may be losing sight
of exactly with whom they are sharing content they post to Facebook. When
Facebook released a new privacy interface in summer 2010 they simplified
privacy controls; however, group-based permissions remain at the core of
fine-grained privacy control. In order to use these fine-grained controls,
users must be able to accurately and usefully specify friend groups. In a
series of 46 semi-structured interviews, we investigated how participants group
their online friends using four different grouping methods. Our results show
that these different mechanisms alter the strategies and groups that users
create, that groups created a priori need further refinement before they can
adequately address privacy decisions, and that users are adapting their online
behavior to avoid the need to specify groups in the current Facebook interface.
We conclude with several recommendations that would allow users improved
group-based access control. Keywords: grouping; online social networks; privacy; access control | |||
| Privacy Concern and Trust in Using Social Network Sites: A Comparison between French and Chinese Users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 234-241 | |
| Li Chen; Ho Keung Tsoi | |||
| Though privacy and trust have been studied in the social network site (SNS),
few have identified the relationships among users' privacy concern, trust and
their actual usage behavior in SNS. Moreover, little attention has been paid to
investigating the differences between users from different cultural contexts.
In this paper, we have been engaged in addressing these concerns by surveying
two typical user groups. The analysis of their answers showed that French and
Chinese are not only significantly different regarding privacy and trust belief
in SNS, but also act significantly different in disclosing personal
information, posting messages, and developing new relationships. Furthermore,
the effect of privacy concern and trust on users' visiting frequency and
willingness to meet new people is also found different between the two groups. Keywords: social network site; privacy concern; trust; usage behavior; cultural
differences | |||
| Privacy Concerns in Enterprise Social Travel: Attitudes and Actions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 242-249 | |
| Netta Aizenbud-Reshef; Artem Barger; Yael Dubinsky; Ido Guy; Shiri Kremer-Davidson | |||
| Privacy in travel refers to the way people manage their personal travel
information and their willingness to share this information with others. Travel
privacy concerns affect the amount and type of information people are willing
to share within social networks, before or after their trip. Our study focuses
on privacy and sharing concerns regarding business travel in an enterprise
setting. We briefly present Voyage, an enterprise social travel application,
and describe a study based on qualitative and quantitative data that inspects
privacy and sharing concerns in business travels. We found that most employees
are theoretically willing to share their business travel plans, but in practice
they share less than expected. Further, most employees are less concerned to
share their past travel information than their future plans. Based on our
study, we suggest guidelines for the development of location based and
enterprise travel applications. Keywords: Privacy; business travel; information sharing; social activity | |||
| Online Games and Family Ties: Influences of Social Networking Game on Family Relationship | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 250-264 | |
| Jing Wen; Yong Ming Kow; Yunan Chen | |||
| How do online games impact intergenerational family relationships? To answer
this question, we investigated QQ Farm, the most popular online game available
on a popular Chinese social networking site. We conducted observations and
semi-structured interviews with sixteen pairs of Chinese parents and their
adult children. Of the sixteen pairs, seven lived locally; nine pairs lived
remotely. The findings of this study suggest that online games provide common
conversational topics among local family members and enrich family time. Online
games with well-designed shared virtual spaces can also help enhance remote
families' awareness of each other's real-life activity. For future
intergenerational games, we recommend a game design that requires minimal
effort, has a 'healthy' theme, and provides features, such as an activity log
and message board, which help maintain game based family communications. Keywords: Social Network Games; Parents-children Relationship; Domestic Play;
Generational Gap | |||
| The Influence of Customer Familiarity and Personal Innovativeness toward Information Technologies on the Sense of Virtual Community and Participation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 265-279 | |
| Manuel J. Sánchez-Franco; José Antonio Carballar-Falcón; Francisco J. Martínez-López; Juan Carlos Gázquez-Abad | |||
| The aim of this study is to investigate, on the one hand, the main effects
of personal innovativeness and familiarity on perceived community support in
the domain of the social network site Tuenti, and, on the other hand, the
moderating effects of personal innovativeness on relationships between
familiarity and perceived community support. A Structural Equation Modelling,
specifically Partial Least Square, is proposed to assess the relationships
between the constructs together with the predictive power of the model
analysed. The results demonstrate that increasing PIIT and familiarity can be
seen as important initiatives that promote perceived community support and
avoid the consideration of competitive social network sites. Keywords: Perceived community support; Social Network Sites; sense of virtual
community; familiarity; personal innovativeness; moderating effects | |||
| Characterizing Interactions among Members of Deaf Communities in Orkut | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 280-287 | |
| Glívia A. R. Barbosa; Ismael S. Silva; Glauber Gonçalves; Raquel O. Prates; Fabrício Benevenuto; Virgílio Almeida | |||
| This paper presents a characterization of interaction phenomena among
members of communities aimed at deaf people in an online social network system,
namely Orkut. The results revealed that members of deaf communities are tighter
than members of other communities. However, analysis of the interface indicates
that it does not always address their specific needs. Keywords: Social Networks; Online Communities; Deaf; Orkut; Accessibility | |||
| The Role of Music in the Design Process with Children | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 288-305 | |
| Ruut Tikkanen; Netta Iivari | |||
| Music and other art based methods should play a significant role in the HCI
field when designing with children, taking the developmental stage of the
children into consideration. Music has been neglected in the design process in
HCI research, while there is a lot of meaningful research in social and
educational studies. HCI research has concentrated more on technological
products and technological needs of special education, bringing up music as an
important part of media too. In this paper we emphasize the versatile role of
music during the design process with preschool children. We describe three
different workshops identifying three different roles for music: a contextual
role, music as a trigger and music as content. The roles demonstrate numerous
possibilities for using music in design workshops and show the usefulness of
music in collaborative design with children. HCI research should utilize music
in more varied forms during design. Keywords: Preschool children; music; design process | |||
| ToCoPlay: Graphical Multi-touch Interaction for Composing and Playing Music | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 306-322 | |
| Sean Lynch; Miguel A. Nacenta; Sheelagh Carpendale | |||
| With the advent of electronic music and computers, the human-sound interface
is liberated from the specific physical constraints of traditional instruments,
which means that we can design musical interfaces that provide arbitrary
mappings between human actions and sound generation. This freedom has resulted
in a wealth of new tools for electronic music generation that expand the limits
of expression, as exemplified by projects such as Reactable and Bricktable. In
this paper we present ToCoPlay, an interface that further explores the design
space of collaborative, multi-touch music creation systems. ToCoPlay is unique
in several respects: it allows creators to dynamically transition between the
roles of composer and performer, it takes advantage of a flexible spatial
mapping between a musical piece and the graphical interface elements that
represent it, and it applies current and traditional interface interaction
techniques for the creation of music. Keywords: Multi-touch; collaboration; composition; music; musical instrument | |||
| Presentation Technique of Scents Using Mobile Olfactory Display for Digital Signage | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 323-337 | |
| Sayumi Sugimoto; Ryo Segawa; Daisuke Noguchi; Yuichi Bannai; Kenichi Okada | |||
| Understanding and attention value of the advertisement will be advanced by
adding scents to the digital signage. However, it was difficult to have
corresponding one-to-many relationships, movements of users, and precise
chronological control of scents. In this study, using mobile olfactory display,
we propose the digital signage with scent which takes account of users'
movements. The concept of this study is constructing the system having scents,
movements, and communication. This system was built by enabling to receive the
scent ejection signal from the advertisement, achieve the distance by the image
of web-camera, and eject the scents with the strength in accordance with
distance, to have the control of scents which accedes to substance of
advertisement and positional relationship. As a result of evaluations, the
olfactory information was carried down to users with great accuracy. The scents
production of the advertisements will be possible with the use of this system. Keywords: Olfactory Information; Olfactory Display; Pulse Ejection; Olfactory
Characteristics; Scented Digital Signage | |||
| "Oh Snap" -- Helping Users Align Digital Objects on Touch Interfaces | | BIBA | Full-Text | 338-355 | |
| Jennifer Fernquist; Garth Shoemaker; Kellogg S. Booth | |||
| We introduce a new snapping technique, Oh Snap, designed specifically for users of direct touch interfaces. Oh Snap allows users to easily align digital objects with lines or other objects using 1-D or 2-D translation or rotation. Our technique addresses two major drawbacks of existing snapping techniques: they either cause objects to "jump" to snap locations, preventing placement very close to those locations, or they "expand" motor space so that on direct-touch interfaces objects lag behind the user's finger. Oh Snap addresses both of these problems using an asymmetric velocity profile similar to a technique for filtering degrees of freedom in multi-touch gestures that was introduced by Nacenta et al. (2009). Oh Snap applies the velocity profile to multiple "snapping" constraints. A user study revealed a 40% performance improvement over no snapping for 1-D translation, 2-D translation, and rotation tasks when snap lines or angles were targeted. We found that Oh Snap performs no worse than traditional snapping, while retaining its important functional benefits. The study also investigated optimal parameter settings and Oh Snap's accuracy in supporting the placement of objects near to, but not at, snap locations, which traditional snapping techniques do not support. Oh Snap was found to be competitive with non-snapping interfaces for these tasks. | |||
| The Link-Offset-Scale Mechanism for Improving the Usability of Touch Screen Displays on the Web | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 356-372 | |
| Willian Massami Watanabe; Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes; Maria da Graça Campos Pimentel | |||
| Touch-screen interfaces have become a widespread-input-device tendency for
computer systems. In this context, many studies investigate how to improve
general usability for touch-screen devices. These studies consider different
interaction design features that improve the usability for touch sensitive
surfaces, considering the low accuracy it presents, given obstacles such as the
"fat finger problem", low-perception of pointing mechanisms, difficulties in
the selection of small objects, among others. This work aims at presenting the
link-offset-scale touch interaction mechanism for improving the usability for
touch-screen devices. The link-offset-scale mechanism makes use of
web-application-structure meta-data (identifying links) to provide feedback
information about the selection of links in touch interfaces, while the surface
is touched by the user. The link-offset-scale mechanism's primary goal is to
reduce the number of errors that users commit while interacting with
touch-screen devices in the Web. Keywords: Touch-screen displays; pervasive computing; ubiquitous computing; usability
in touch-screen devices; web usability | |||
| The Effects of Personal Displays and Transfer Techniques on Collaboration Strategies in Multi-touch Based Multi-Display Environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 373-390 | |
| Stefan Bachl; Martin Tomitsch; Karin Kappel; Thomas Grechenig | |||
| Multi-touch tabletop systems promise to enhance collaboration in
multi-display (MDE) environments. However, little is known about the effects of
combining shared multi-touch tabletops with multi-touch tablet computers
(tablets) as the collaborators' personal displays. In this paper we present the
implementation of a MDE with multi-touch input on both shared and personal
displays and its evaluation regarding task performance, user preferences and
collaboration strategies compared to a standard multi-touch tabletop setting.
Eight participant pairs had to solve a collaborative sorting task using three
different transfer techniques. Based on an analysis of video recordings, log
files and user feedback we identified task solving and collaboration
strategies. The use of tablets enabled participants to follow diverse
strategies and participants preferred the collaboration using tablets, while
overall task performance and the amount of close collaboration were higher
without the tablets. Keywords: Co-located collaboration; interactive surfaces; multi-display environment;
multi-touch; tabletop interaction | |||
| Evaluating Physical/Virtual Occlusion Management Techniques for Horizontal Displays | | BIBA | Full-Text | 391-408 | |
| Waqas Javed; KyungTae Kim; Sohaib Ghani; Niklas Elmqvist | |||
| We evaluate unguided and guided visual search performance for a set of techniques that mitigate occlusion between physical and virtual objects on a tabletop display. The techniques are derived from a general model of hybrid physical/virtual occlusion, and take increasingly drastic measures to make the user aware of, identify, and access hidden objects -- but with increasingly space-consuming and disruptive impact on the display. Performance is different depending on the visual display, suggesting a tradeoff between management strength and visual space deformation. | |||
| Usage and Recognition of Finger Orientation for Multi-Touch Tabletop Interaction | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 409-426 | |
| Chi Tai Dang; Elisabeth André | |||
| Building on the observation that finger orientation is an inherent part of
human's interaction in the real world, exploiting finger orientation for
multi-touch tabletop interaction would facilitate more natural interaction
techniques. We motivate this by means of examples where the finger orientation
improves or enriches interaction. Afterwards, we present a simple and fast
approach to detect the finger orientation reliably for multi-touch tabletop
interaction. The steps involved are computationally cheap and therefore suit
the needs of tracking software operating under time-critical conditions. We
show that the presented approach enables the detection of finger orientation
also for fingers that touch the tabletop surface only slightly. Further,
recognition rates on real data gained from the camera within a multi-touch
tabletop are presented in order to give a measure for the precision and
reliability of the presented approach. Keywords: Finger Orientation; Multi-Touch; Tabletop; Tracking; Interaction | |||
| Tangoscope: A Tangible Audio Device for Tabletop Interaction | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 427-434 | |
| Jörg Edelmann; Yvonne Kammerer; Birgit Imhof; Peter Gerjets; Wolfgang Straßer | |||
| Tabletop installations allow multiple users to playback digital media
simultaneously. With public speakers, however, simultaneous auditory content
gets superimposed, leading to a confusing and disturbing user experience. In
this paper, we present Tangoscope, a tangible audio output device for tabletop
interaction. As we augmented headphones with a visual marker-based
identification mechanism, with the Tangoscope each user is provided with
individual auditory content. To allow for an instruction-free and intuitive
usage of the audio device we employed the metaphor of a real stethoscope. A
first user study indicated the self-explaining use of the Tangoscope. Keywords: Tabletop interaction; audio interface; individual audio content; natural
user interface; multi-user interaction | |||
| Supporting Social Protocols in Tabletop Interaction through Visual Cues | | BIBA | Full-Text | 435-442 | |
| Mirko Fetter; Tom Gross; Maxi Hucke | |||
| Multi-touch tabletops provide new means for co-located people to work together on a task by directly manipulating objects and tools on a single display in unison. Despite their benefits they also entail new challenges. One major concern is how to help users avoid conflicting actions. Previous work discusses if social protocols are sufficient to regulate coordination, and if policies are needed to enforce specific behaviours. Our study on different variants of a tabletop game shows that providing visual cues on ownership can help to follow social protocols and therefore reduce the need for policies. | |||
| Effects of a Tabletop Interface on the Co-construction of Concept Maps | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 443-460 | |
| Stefan Oppl; Chris Stary | |||
| Concept Mapping is a method for externalizing and reflecting knowledge about
real world phenomena. In cooperative settings, concept maps can also be used to
aid cooperative learning activities and the development of a common
understanding about the mapping subject. This process imposes requirements on
tool support that have hardly been addressed in existing concept mapping tools.
We present a tabletop interface designed to meet these requirements. In an
empirical study, the positive effects on the cooperative mapping process
facilitated by the proposed system have been shown in comparison to a
traditional, screen-based system. Keywords: Concept mapping; tangible interface; tabletop; cooperation; alignment of
meaning; sense making | |||
| The Continuous Interaction Space: Interaction Techniques Unifying Touch and Gesture on and above a Digital Surface | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 461-476 | |
| Nicolai Marquardt; Ricardo Jota; Saul Greenberg; Joaquim A. Jorge | |||
| The rising popularity of digital table surfaces has spawned considerable
interest in new interaction techniques. Most interactions fall into one of two
modalities: 1) direct touch and multi-touch (by hand and by tangibles) directly
on the surface, and 2) hand gestures above the surface. The limitation is that
these two modalities ignore the rich interaction space between them. To move
beyond this limitation, we first contribute a unification of these discrete
interaction modalities called the continuous interaction space. The idea is
that many interaction techniques can be developed that go beyond these two
modalities, where they can leverage the space between them. That is, we believe
that the underlying system should treat the space on and above the surface as a
continuum, where a person can use touch, gestures, and tangibles anywhere in
the space and naturally move between them. Our second contribution illustrates
this, where we introduce a variety of interaction categories that exploit the
space between these modalities. For example, with our Extended Continuous
Gestures category, a person can start an interaction with a direct touch and
drag, then naturally lift off the surface and continue their drag with a hand
gesture over the surface. For each interaction category, we implement an
example (or use prior work) that illustrates how that technique can be applied.
In summary, our primary contribution is to broaden the design space of
interaction techniques for digital surfaces, where we populate the continuous
interaction space both with concepts and examples that emerge from considering
this space as a continuum. Keywords: Touch; gestures; surfaces; interactive tabletops; 3D interaction; tangibles;
portable devices; continuous interaction space | |||
| AffinityTable -- A Hybrid Surface for Supporting Affinity Diagramming | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 477-484 | |
| Florian Geyer; Ulrike Pfeil; Jochen Budzinski; Anita Höchtl; Harald Reiterer | |||
| Using affinity diagramming as an example, we investigate interaction
techniques for supporting collaborative design activities. Based on an
observational study, we identified design guidelines that need to be addressed
to find a close fit to embodied practice. Using this knowledge, we designed and
implemented AffinityTable, a hybrid surface for supporting affinity
diagramming. The tool combines digital pen & paper with an interactive
table and tangible tokens. An additional vertical display is used to support
reflection and group coordination. Keywords: design tools; collaborative design; affinity diagramming; reality-based
interaction; digital pen & paper; hybrid interactive surfaces | |||
| Design as Intercultural Dialogue: Coupling Human-Centered Design with Requirement Engineering Methods | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 485-502 | |
| Chiara Leonardi; Luca Sabatucci; Angelo Susi; Massimo Zancanaro | |||
| In the design of information technologies, the challenge of integrating a
human-centered design approach with software engineering methods emerge in
different forms. The main challenge is to set the ground for different
disciplines and professional cultures communicate and work together. The
orchestration of different contributions and the establishment of communication
practices that facilitates the integration of the different languages and
procedures are crucial steps to take full advantage of different research
traditions. This paper presents a case study in which human-centered design and
requirement engineering methodologies have been used within a large research
projects aiming at developing innovative technologies and services to support
professionals in nursing homes. The design process took the form of an
intercultural dialogue that required human-centered and requirement-engineering
professionals to work across borders. Starting from our case study, the paper
presents the boundaries identified between the human-centered and the
engineering perspective and proposes a framework to guide the integration
process conceived as an intercultural dialogue between disciplines. Keywords: Human-centered design; Requirement engineering; inter-disciplinarity | |||
| Predicting Selective Availability for Instant Messaging | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 503-520 | |
| Mirko Fetter; Julian Seifert; Tom Gross | |||
| Instant messaging (IM) systems allow users to spontaneously communicate over
distance, yet they bear the risk for disruption of the recipient. In order to
reduce disruption, novel approaches for detecting and presenting mutual
availability are needed. In this paper we show how fine-grained IM availability
predictions can be made for nomadic users solely based on sensors installed on
a laptop computer. Our approach provides comparable accuracies to previous
work, while it eliminates the need for augmenting the offices or the users with
further sensors. We performed a user study to collect sensor data. Alongside
with labels collected by means of Experience Sampling, the data allow for
creating probabilistic models for predicting selective availability. This way,
we demonstrate how the required effort involved in proactively managing one's
availability selectively towards a variety of recipients can be reduced by
automatic adaptation, and give insights in the lessons learned. Keywords: Instant Messaging; Context Inference; Sensors; Privacy | |||
| Testing the Usability of a Platform for Rapid Development of Mobile Context-Aware Applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 521-536 | |
| Valentim Realinho; A. Eduardo Dias; Teresa Romão | |||
| In this paper, we present the usability evaluation of IVO (Integrated
Virtual Operator), a platform that supports the rapid development of
contextaware applications by users with no programming skills. Using only the
tools provided by the platform (IVO Builder and IVO Outlook), users can define
temporal and spatial conditions and associate them with workflows of activities
available within the platform. This way, whenever the defined conditions occur,
the user's smartphone will immediately produce the intended behavior, with no
need for user intervention. The applications developed using IVO can easily be
made available to other users through a distributed web platform. Moreover, an
android client was developed, to run the IVO-developed applications, allowing
the smartphone to act as the ubiquitous interaction device. The evaluation of
the platform was performed through usability tests at both the end-user level
(android client) and the developer-user level (builder tools). Keywords: Ubiquitous Computing; Context-Awareness; Rapid Application Development;
Usability Evaluation; Interaction Design; Mobility | |||
| Hammering Models: Designing Usable Modeling Tools | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 537-554 | |
| Ko-Hsun Huang; Nuno Jardim Nunes; Leonel Nobrega; Larry Constantine; Monchu Chen | |||
| A modeling tool not only helps users express their ideas and thoughts but
also serves as a communication platform among domain experts, designers,
developers, and others practitioners. Existing modeling tools have shortcomings
in terms of supported functionality and situated usability or do not meet the
needs of users of varying levels of expertise. To facilitate improvement of
such modeling tools, this research begins by identifying common problems in
existing tools and proceeds by borrowing concepts from grounded theory to
develop a framework of redesign guidelines. A case study illustrates how this
framework can be used by applying it to MetaSketch, a metamodeling tool. The
study employs multiple user experience research methods, including usability
tests with paper prototypes, observations, interviews, and contextual
inquiries. A set of core tasks and two significant modeling approaches were
identified that directly influence interface and interaction design for
modeling tools. Keywords: Model-Based Design; Interactive Systems; Usability and Software; User
Experience Design; Metamodels; Metamodeling; Participatory Design | |||
| Task Descriptions Using Academic Oriented Modelling Languages: A Survey of Actual Practices across the SIGCHI Community | | BIBA | Full-Text | 555-570 | |
| Stanislas Couix; Jean-Marie Burkhardt | |||
| There is an extensive literature on task modelling related to the design of computer systems. Task analysis and task modelling have been widely recognized as central components in human-centred approaches. The aim of this paper is to report on some results of a worldwide survey about actual practices of task descriptions languages (TDL) in SIGCHI community. Results suggest that academic TDL are not well known and not used by participants. They prefer using "home-made" TDL. This may be explained by the fact that formal TDL are not adapted to tasks analysts needs and that task modelling is an expert activity, mainly used by skilled analysts. Indeed, this study shows that task models are not only used in a productive way, i.e. to derive useful inputs to the design of man-machine systems. Thus, it seems that formal TDL failed to take this into account. | |||
| Selective Modeling to Support Task Migratability of Interactive Artifacts | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 571-588 | |
| Anke Dittmar; Peter Forbrig | |||
| Selective modeling is suggested as a technique that encourages designers to
mix exploratory, analytical, and empirical design activities in interaction
design. The co-development of models and prototypes of interactive systems is
proposed to support a better balance between formal and explorative design
approaches. Models serve to inform design decisions but also to analyze
emerging alternatives of prototypical implementations.
Task migratability is a usability design principle that describes how control for task execution is transferred between system and user. Refined flexible task allocation is rarely achievable through pure top-down decomposition as used in many model-based approaches. The paper shows at the example of HOPS models how selective modeling can be applied to develop prototypes in a deliberated evolutionary way by using models to express different viewpoints and to explore design options at different levels of granularity. Keywords: User-Centered Design; Model-Based Design of Interactive Systems; Exploratory
Design; Tools for Design; Modeling; Prototyping; Design Rationale | |||
| Structuring and Composition Mechanisms to Address Scalability Issues in Task Models | | BIBA | Full-Text | 589-609 | |
| Célia Martinie; Philippe Palanque; Marco Winckler | |||
| Along tasks analysis and modeling history it has been demonstrated by experience that task modeling activities become cumbersome when performed on large, real-life systems. However, one of the main goals of task models is to provide designers with a structured and complete description of the users tasks especially when these user tasks are numerous and/or complex. Several authors proposed to handle that problem by providing tools aiming at supporting both construction and understanding (usually via simulation) of models. One of the most popular examples is CTTE environment which is dedicated to the engineering of CTT task models. The paper shows how to extend notations for task description with two kinds of mechanisms: composition and refinement/abstraction. Refinement/abstraction mechanisms make it possible to decompose a task model into several models and to interconnect them. Composition mechanisms make it possible to define communication means between task models. The paper proposes a precise definition of these mechanisms, their integration into a notation for describing task models and demonstrates that altogether, these two structuring mechanisms support the effective exploitation of task models for large scale application. The use of the mechanisms is presented on a real-life case study from the space domain describing operators' tasks to monitor a satellite and manage failures. | |||
| User Driven Evolution of User Interface Models -- The FLEPR Approach | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 610-627 | |
| Stefan Hennig; Jan Van den Bergh; Kris Luyten; Annerose Braune | |||
| In model-based user interface development, models at different levels of
abstraction are used. While ideas may initially only be expressed in more
abstract models, modifications and improvements according to user's feedback
will likely be made at the concrete level, which may lead to model
inconsistencies that need to be fixed in every iteration. Transformations form
the bridge between these models. Because one-to-one mappings between models
cannot always be defined, these transformations are completely manual or they
require manual post-treatment.
We propose interactive but automatic transformations to address the mapping problem while still allowing designer's creativity. To manage consistency and semantic correctness within and between models and therefore to foster iterative development processes, we are combining these with techniques to track decisions and modifications and techniques of intra- and inter-model validation. Our approach has been implemented for abstract and concrete user interface models using Eclipse-based frameworks for model-driven engineering. Our approach and tool support is illustrated by a case study. Keywords: User interface models; model transformations; interactive model
transformations; model consistency; model synchronization | |||
| Adapting Desktop Web Pages for Vocal Browsing | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 628-635 | |
| Fabio Paternò; Christian Sisti | |||
| In this paper we describe a solution to make Web pages more suitable for
vocal browsing by analyzing and modifying their logical structure. The solution
exploits intermediate logical descriptions that are automatically created by
reverse engineering techniques. The adaptation engine aims to identify the main
logical structure of the Web page components and remove the aspects specific to
the graphical modality. Then, a vocal implementation is generated to support
browsing, which begins by the user's selecting from the main components. Keywords: Adaptation; Web sites; Vocal Browsing; User Interface Models; Accessibility | |||
| Using the Journalistic Metaphor to Design User Interfaces That Explain Sensor Data | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 636-643 | |
| Martin Molina; Enrique Parodi; Amanda Stent | |||
| Facilitating general access to data from sensor networks (including traffic,
hydrology and other domains) increases their utility. In this paper we argue
that the journalistic metaphor can be effectively used to automatically
generate multimedia presentations that help non-expert users analyze and
understand sensor data. The journalistic layout and style are familiar to most
users. Furthermore, the journalistic approach of ordering information from most
general to most specific helps users obtain a high-level understanding while
providing them the freedom to choose the depth of analysis to which they want
to go. We describe the general characteristics and architectural requirements
for an interactive intelligent user interface for exploring sensor data that
uses the journalistic metaphor. We also describe our experience in developing
this interface in real-world domains (e.g., hydrology). Keywords: Intelligent user interface; multimedia presentation; interactive data
exploration; user interface for web applications | |||
| Domain Experts Tailoring Interaction to Users -- An Evaluation Study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 644-661 | |
| Helena Lindgren; Patrik J. Winnberg; Peter Winnberg | |||
| This paper presents ACKTUS, a modeling tool for developing knowledge-based
systems for the health domain, and an evaluation study of the system. The main
purpose of the evaluation was to investigate whether the functionality and
interaction design of ACKTUS was sufficiently intuitive for the domain experts
to contribute with knowledge and to model the interaction design of the three
end users' applications. Another purpose was to evaluate the applicability of
the activity assessment protocol AAIMA for analysis. The study design was
qualitative and formative, using observations and interviews with users to
collect data. Three medical experts and two experts in occupational therapy
participated, providing expertise in four different domains. The participants
increased their understanding and skills during the evaluation period leading
to improved knowledge-based applications. The AAIMA protocol proved to be
useful and the results are fed into ongoing development work on developing the
adaptive functionality of the ACKTUS systems. Keywords: Formative evaluation; interaction design; end-user development and
adaptation; knowledge modeling; e-health | |||
| Identifying Relationships between Physiological Measures and Evaluation Metrics for 3D Interaction Techniques | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 662-679 | |
| Rafael Rieder; Christian Haag Kristensen; Márcio Sarroglia Pinho | |||
| This project aims to present a methodology to study the relationships
between physiological measures and evaluation metrics for 3D interaction
techniques using methods for multivariate data analysis. Physiological
responses, such as heart rate and skin conductance, offer objective data about
the user stress during interaction. This could be useful, for instance, to
evaluate qualitative aspects of interaction techniques without relying on
solely subjective data. Moreover, these data could contribute to improve task
performance analysis by measuring different responses to 3D interaction
techniques. With this in mind, we propose a methodology that defines a testing
protocol, a normalization procedure and statistical techniques, considering the
use of physiological measures during the evaluation process. A case study
comparison between two 3D interaction techniques (ray-casting and HOMER) shows
promising results, pointing to heart rate variability, as measured by the NN50
parameter, as a potential index of task performance. Further studies are needed
in order to establish guidelines for evaluation processes based on well-defined
associations between human behaviors and human actions realized in 3D user
interfaces. Keywords: usability metrics; physiological measures; interaction techniques | |||
| Comparing User Experience and Performance in SecondLife and Blackboard | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 680-696 | |
| Alistair G. Sutcliffe; Amal Alrayes | |||
| Collaborative problem solving was compared in SecondLife (SL) and Blackboard
(BB) and both technologies were compared with a face-to-face (FTF) control
condition. There were no performance differences overall, although FTF was
quicker and preferred, followed by BB and SL. BB was perceived to be more
usable, whereas SL provided better user experience. Worse performance was
indicated by dislike of avatar interaction in SL, and poor user experience in
BB, whereas better performance was associated with engagement with avatars, and
better usability in BB. The affordances for collaboration in each technology
are discussed, with reflections on the mixed methods approach using qualitative
and quantitative data analysis. Keywords: Collaborative problem solving and learning; Affordances; Mixed methods
evaluation | |||