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The human ability to express and recognize emotions plays an important role in face-to-face communication, and as technology advances it will be increasingly important for computer-generated avatars to be similarly expressive. In this paper, we present the detailed development process for the Lifelike Responsive Avatar Framework (LRAF) and a prototype application for modeling a specific individual to analyze the effectiveness of expressive avatars. In particular, the goals of our pilot study (n = 1,744) are to determine whether the specific avatar being developed is capable of conveying emotional states (Ekmanös six classic emotions) via facial features and whether a realistic avatar is an appropriate vehicle for conveying the emotional states accompanying spoken information. The results of this study show that happiness and sadness are correctly identified with a high degree of accuracy while the other four emotional states show mixed results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have created an experimental prototype that enhances an ordinary personal media player by adding digital library capabilities. It does not enable access to a remote digital library from a user΄s PDA; rather, it runs a complete, standard digital library server environment on the device. Being optimized for multimedia information, this platform has truly vast storage capacity. It raises the possibility of not just personal collections but entire institutional-scale digital libraries that are fully portable. Our implementation even allows the device to be configured as a web server to provide digital library content over a network, inverting the standard mobile client-server configuration and incidentally providing full-screen access. Anecdotal yet compelling evidence as to the usefulness of being able to access a self-sufficient digital library anytime, anywhere is given through an example built from the PDF files of the Joint ACM/IEEE digital library conference. Other examples include the Complete Works of Shakespeare and collections on Humanitarian Aid. This paper describes the facilities we built, focusing on interface issues that were encountered and solved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although numerous virtual reality (VR) applications devoted to educational purposes have been developed at University of Illinois at Chicago's (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory, we focus on the Virtual Harlem project because it is designed as a collaborative learning environment (CLN)—a VR application that is structured as a networked collaboration with the goal of building a model of the subject being studied (see "theVirtual Harlem Project" below for a more detailed description). Virtual Harlem is a learning environment (Sosnoski & Carter, 2001). Visitors can enter Virtual Harlem and navigate through it as a way of learning about the historical context, the events, the everyday life of persons who were living in Harlem at the time. Virtual Harlem is also an historical replica of Harlem, NY. during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s. Scholars of the Harlem Renaissance direct their students in research that contributes to the model. Their research informs the work of students in computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago's (UIC) Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL). Many of these students are in the Fine Arts program at UIC and they contribute their skills by creating digital replicas of the buildings, people, automobiles, and other aspects of the scenario. Virtual Harlem is also a networked project and has been seen at VR sites from New York, to France, to Sweden, to Japan, and to Arizona. Classes in the Harlem Renaissance at various universities, for example, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France are part of the network that use Virtual Harlem to give their students a more holistic experience than books can provide. The Virtual Harlem project at UIC has been influenced by two important VR educational applications developed at UICs EVL, namely, the NICE project and the Round Earth project. We describe these projects and indicate how they have influenced the Virtual Harlem project in the next section. Then we delineate the pedagogical rationales underlying the project. Next we describe the Virtual Harlem project as a CLN, after which we comment on two of its outcomes, and conclude with comments from our perspective on the significance of the Virtual Harlem project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the contribution of various design parameters towards the pilot's forward field of view (FFOV). This study was based upon the SQ006 crash at Chiang Kai Shek Airport, Taipei, Taiwan on 31 Oct 2000. A 3-dimensional scale model was created to simulate certain design features experienced on the night of the accident. A simulation of the Boeing 747-400 taxiing towards Runway 05R was constructed to visualize the FFOV afforded. Conclusions and implications of the specifications of the design parameters studied will be reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this work is to investigate the role of multimodal, especially auditory displays on human manipulation in augmented environments. We use information from all our sensory modalities when interacting in natural environments. Despite differences among the senses, we use them in concert to perceive and interact with multimodally specified objects and events. Traditionally, human-computer interaction has focused on graphical displays, thus not taking advantage of the richness of human senses and skills developed though interaction with the physical world [1]. Virtual environments have the potential to integrate all sensory modalities, to present the user with multiple inputs and outputs, and to allow the user to directly acquire and manipulate augmented or virtual objects. With the increasing availability of haptic and auditory displays, it is important to understand the complex relationships amongst different sensory feedback modalities and how they affect performance when interacting with augmented and virtual objects. Background and motivation for this research, questions and hypotheses, and some preliminary results are presented. A plan for future experiments is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User Interface patterns have the potential to guide the development of conceptual user interface models. A pattern management tool, which would enable development and maintenance of collections of patterns and their use by user interface developers, is proposed. Preliminary results have identified six questions that can be used for describing the internal validity of a user interface pattern language. Keywords: user interface, use case, pattern languages, conceptual design [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines PhD research into user experience in interactive computer game development. The study will investigate how usability methods and approaches can be adapted and extended to evaluate and improve the user experience of gaming systems. The research will focus on exploring ways to evaluate fun and engaging user experiences, and on identifying how to provide useful, valid, timely, cost-efficient feedback on user experience to game development teams. A range of research methods is proposed including case studies with industry stakeholders, contextual and lab-based user experience evaluations with gamers, and action research within a games company. Research findings will inform the development of a practical evaluation model and tools to support game experience design practices and product development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Weisberg's argument that everyone is creative, and exists in varying degrees, this PhD proposal aims to investigate the relationship between creativity and information seeking, and explores implications for interface design with design features that might support users' information seeking behaviours. A holistic model of creativity was proposed synthesizing established models in creativity. Based on the model, five approaches investigating relationships between creativity and information seeking were highlighted. Initial work carried out attempted to understand users' information seeking behaviours to elicit supportive features. Discussion of on-going work is also presented to indicate approaches proposed to design, implement, and evaluate a prototype with design features to support information seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactions between humans and computers are becoming increasingly physical. Technology is embedded in the environment around us and is now hosted by the human body. This research explores characteristics of human-computer interaction when the human body and its movements become input for interaction and interface control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multidisciplinary conferences in hospitals are becoming an everyday part of health service delivery and being recommended as a mechanism for ensuring quality patient care and management. This paper reports preliminary findings of an ethnographic study of Clinical Pathology Conferences with Respiratory teams. Educational, patient management and organizational objectives of the conference are identified. The findings so far suggest that collaborative technologies have the potential to improve the effectiveness of clinical conference activity. Time, location and missing artefacts are identified as being issues as well as the coordination of the series of events associated with patient investigative and assessment procedures. The implications of recording data and interactions at the conference are also being investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge workers today have a lot of digital documents to manage, and most employ some sort of organizational system or scheme to help them. Most commonly used software provides the ability to create a hierarchical organization, but the appropriateness of this structure for personal digital document management has not been established. This research aims to understand how people currently organize their documents, identify the strengths and weaknesses of current systems and explore the usefulness of other information structures. This will provide insight into how personal digital document management systems can be made more usable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Industrial Designers handle information within the early stages of the design process they are influenced by the information viewed and the Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) that they utilise. The purpose of this research is to investigate the influences that Information Retrieval Systems such as Search Engines, the Internet and Academic Databases have on Industrial Designers' searching strategies. The study involves the observation of designers transforming early design language into query 'keyword' language for the operation of IRS's and how this transition causes a design direction shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whenever people talk to each other, non-verbal behaviour plays a very important role in regulating their interaction. However, almost all human-computer interactions take place using a keyboard or mouse - computers are completely oblivious to the non-verbal behaviour of their users. This paper outlines the plan for an interface that aims to adapt like a human to the non-verbal behaviour of users. An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) for counting and addition is being implemented in conjunction with the New Zealand Numeracy Project. The system's interface will detect the student's non-verbal behaviour using in-house image processing software, enabling it to adapt to the student's non-verbal behaviour in similar ways to a human tutor. We have conducted a video study of how human tutors interpret the non-verbal behaviour of students, which has laid the foundation for this research. Keywords. Affective computing, non-verbal behaviour, adaptation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists a pressing need for the fruits of research into interface design for older adults to be made available to the wider design community. Older people form a special user group as a result of age related capability changes, who cannot easily participate in User Centred Design activities. Interface designers must take this into account. This paper introduces patterns as a solution for passing on successful design for older adults [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Naked Object applications are Expressive - a desirable quality not present in traditional software systems. However, these applications can generate a large number of windows leading to a cluttered desktop. In order to rectify this problem we have used a Zoomable User Interface (ZUI), which provides the user with an infinite amount of space. A system titled ViewPoint was developed to effectively integrate Naked Objects with a Zoomable environment. The finished system enhances Naked Objects by making full use of ZUI capabilities. ViewPoint also introduces various generic context awareness and navigation mechanisms to optimise the use of ZUIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One challenge confronting web site designers is to provide effective navigational support. Supplemental navigation tools such as sitemaps are frequently included on web sites to support navigation. However, there is a lack of empirically based guidelines for designers of such tools. This paper reports an empirical investigation into the factors influencing the decision by users to select sitemaps or search tools. The study establishes a relationship between goal specificity and user selection of sitemap and search tools providing a basis for the design of further investigations into the usability and design of such tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of exploring is an important aspect of a user's general understanding of the environment they are navigating through in computational systems. The research outlined in this paper briefly presents an empirical study of user exploratory behaviour within the web context. It outlines the development of an exploratory grid obtained from this study and its use in forming the DIANEnx task model, enabling user interface and web designers to model users' exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the existing efforts for supporting the preparation and delivery of accessible e-learning materials propose guidelines that prevalently ad-dress technical accessibility issues. However, little or no consideration is given to the didactical creators in the learning material preparation. The existing guidelines also usually provide generic indications on alternative forms of didactical content to enable equivalent access of the content. However, the sole provision of equivalent forms does not guarantee effective access. While this paper acknowledges the role of the existing guidelines, it proposes that the didactical domain creators be provided with a non-technical recourse that can enable them to contribute to or participate in the development process of accessible e-learning content aiming at guaranteeing an effective learning experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a pilot study, professional information technologists from both commercial and academic institutions showed that representing the requirements for a simple television remote control device could be done accurately and completely using separate languages that are for 1) user interface specification, and 2) system specification, and, 3) with natural language. That individuals can create 3 separate, but equivalent representations is important because, with the aid of an underlying meta-representation, it allows system stakeholders to view software requirements in whatever way best represents their particular area of concern, while maintaining internal consistency between views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Weisberg's argument that everyone is creative, this paper highlights a model of information seeking capturing users' creative traits by synthesizing established models in information seeking and creativity. Using Google, a pilot study was conducted to understand subjects' creative information seeking process. Claims Analysis and Interaction Framework were used to elicit design features that might have supported subjects' creative, "serendipitous" information seeking. This paper presents novel, initial work towards eliciting conceptual design features for users' creative, "serendipitous" information seeking behaviors. It concludes with a discussion on creativity and interface design for information retrieval systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We survey a number of tools that have been developed for generating sets of colours according to commonly accepted rules for colour harmony. Informal manual techniques for generating harmonious sets of colours have been known and used for at least a century. Although superficially simple, they have not been precise techniques, as pigment-based and dye-based colouring techniques are not susceptible to accurate measurement, in terms of area of colour used or mathematical relationships between colours, and mathematical analysis does not appeal strongly to the design community. Now the historical separation between engineering and design has narrowed. First, the development of colour television brought numerical precision into colour specification. Secondly, in computers, the medium for colour representation and the tool for calculating colour parameters have been integrated. Consequently, it has also become feasible to derive sets of harmonious colours automatically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three important ways in which student learning can be facilitated are: getting them to work in groups, ensuring they can communicate face-to-face, and by using a computer. The question arises, can we do all three at the same time? One answer is to use a digital whiteboard. This device allows a group of users to share a workspace in an orderly fashion, and the computer driving the board can be programmed to support the students' learning. We describe some of our research where we have observed groups using whiteboards (both digital and non-digital) and our work towards producing a computer system to help and guide learners in this kind of setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The domain of ambulance command and control is complex due to dispatchers being required to make potentially hazardous decisions, often based on uncertain data, received from distributed sources in an environment that is extremely dynamic. These complexities were established after observing and interviewing fourteen ambulance command and control dispatchers located in two communications centres in New Zealand. In addition to the identification of complexities, the interviews resulted in the formulation of decision strategies utilised by the dispatchers when working in the communication centres. This research has implications for display design and provides avenues of research regarding how best to display the decision-making data required by ambulance dispatchers to overcome the complexities they encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans use their faces, hands and body as an integral part of their communication with others. For the computer to interact intelligently with human users, computers should be able to recognize emotions, by analyzing the human's affective state, physiology and behavior. Multimodal interfaces allow humans to interact with machines through multiple modalities such as speech, facial expression, gesture, and gaze. In this paper, we present an overview of research conducted on face and body gesture analysis and recognition. In order to make human-computer interfaces truly natural, we need to develop technology that tracks human movement, body behavior and facial expression, and interprets these movements in an affective way. Accordingly, in this paper we present a vision-based framework that combines face and body gesture for multimodal HCI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sony EyeToyTM is a webcam attachment for the Playstation2 (PS2) gaming console. The EyeToyTM places a user's mirror image on a television screen while it detects their movements in order for them to manipulate objects and characters within a game. Although EyeToyTM is immediately popular due to the novelty of interaction, users often have trouble forming a mental model of how to manipulate their own image in a 2-dimensional (2-D) 3rd person gaming scenario. Multiplayer testing sessions were carried out to explore the impact that a game's theme and a user's age and previous gaming experience would have on how users initially cope with this form of gaming interaction. A lack of tangible feedback and unrealistic game scenarios were the main hindrances to users reconciling the fact that they were in a 3-dimensional (3-D) space but had to behave as 2-D characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines user's opinions on personal information ex-change with an Intelligent Environment providing information for HCI design for acceptable and usable application development. It found that users are more comfortable with their information being exchanged if it is clear what the in-formation is being used for, and who will have access to it. 83% of all subjects wanted control over the exchange of their information, and a third would be more likely to share information with a service provider if they had a good global reputation and if the user could request that their information could be deleted. The biggest influence on a user's information sharing preferences was found to be the existence of a prior relationship with the information recipient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a novel locomotion interface that can generate infinite floor for various surfaces. This interface allows users to participate in a life-like walking experience within virtual environments, which include various terrains such as slopes and stairs. The interface is composed of two three-DOF (X, Y, Yaw) planar devices and two three-DOF (Pitch, Roll, and Z) footpads. The planar devices are driven by AC servomotor for generating fast motions, while the footpad devices are driven by pneumatic actuators for continuous support of human weight. For sensing system, a motion tracker is attached to the human foot in order to track the foot positions, and the combination of pla-nar forces from the planar device and the vertical forces of the footpad device gives the gravity reaction forces (GRF), which is important to recognize the walking condition. For control implementation, even though the human is walking continuously, the human body should be confined in certain area to walk on an infinite floor. Thus, the walking control algorithm is suggested to satisfy above conditions keeping the safety of the walker. For preliminary experimental evaluation of the interface device, the walking interface is proven for a general human to walk naturally without disturbing human body. This interface can be applied to various areas such as VR navigations, rehabilitation, vocational training, and military exercises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how to mount a new pointing device by which users, who have an existing metaphor for using information appliances, can effectively apply that including Personal Computer (PC). We propose the system wearing the operation lens support, which is called "OPR-LENS (Operation-Lens)". The OPR-LENS system is composed of the OPR-LENS module and the OPR-LENS device, and mounted on the server and the viewer software connected via TCP/IP, respectively. The OPR-LENS device forms a temple block suitable for a palm operation. Users' manipulation can be effectively supported by the effect of the spherical lens with the partial GUI image. This research investigates the evaluation of the OPR-LENS system through mounting a prototype system and implementing the performance evaluation experiment. In addition, the application example when applying to the existing metaphor such as information appliances was shown in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to investigate the usability of DVD interfaces via their menus and navigation, inspired by Donald Norman who has had a pivotal role in user-centred design and usability. The paper encompasses theoretical aspects of interactivity, usability and DVD technology. A usability test was administered with the DVDs chosen. The results from the usability test were the main focus in this research. Such results were supportive of Norman's claims, as participants experienced varying degrees of usability issues. Furthermore, the findings were used to develop a set of guidelines and recommendations designers could follow. If these were adhered to, it would have significantly alleviated the difficulty the participants had in interacting with the DVDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure intended to support accessibility can be employed to provide useful information for the usability evaluation of graphical user inter-faces. In this paper, we discuss how software infrastructure designed to augment assistive technologies for disabled users can be used to provide event in-formation relevant to usability analysis. The problem is that extracting information about the interaction is difficult and there is no standard method for extracting complete event logs describing the interaction. Approaches to extract usability interactions so far have been ad-hoc, and on the whole quite complex to incorporate into logging systems. Encouraging support for accessibility generates a valuable, high-level channel of information for user interface evaluation and provides benefits to reach the broader user community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common Industry Format (CIF) provides an industry standard for the reporting of usability test results. The ongoing success of the CIF will in part be determined by the support of future IT professionals. The work reported in this paper describes our experience in adapting and using the CIF in an introductory Human-Computer Interaction course at an Australian University. It also examined subsequent student perceptions about the usefulness and ease of use of a CIF-style template, and the degree to which students were able to generate CIF-compliant reports. It was found that few modifications to the template were required to meet the educational objectives of the course. Overall, students were neutral as to whether the CIF was a useful or easy to use device, but were able to generate moderately compliant reports. Comments from students indicated that more formal training in the CIF might be useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One aspect of information technology increasingly being researched is organizing and managing the huge repository of data and information available. This is particularly relevant in the context of the explosion in Internet use. As knowledge is gathered from the Internet the ability to retain and recall the knowledge is becoming more and more difficult and complex. Computer based techniques are often used to store and manage this data. Managing the data typically takes two forms; firstly cross-referencing to the original source as in a bibliography or reference list, or secondly collected by an individual, such as purchasing a book, creating a hard copy of a web page, and so forth. With the Internet, web based tools and techniques are frequently employed to manage this information. This may be by maintaining a list of links as in a portal to actual web content, by using the available web search engines, or saving the content into a personal electronic knowledge space. This paper will look at the ways this knowledge could be collected and the smallest unit required to organize small pieces of data. The ability to map this into an electronic medium is then explored, and a prototype meta-data schema is then discussed. Finally, the Human-Computer Interface will be discussed that could enable the data to be organized in a variety of ways based on the meta-data schema. Methods keywords: XML, multimedia meta language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to identify areas of web usability in the News Portal industry that may be culturally specific so that web designers would target these areas when designing web sites. It also explores the current state of globalising these web sites in terms of catering for languages of users. Findings indicates that cultural preferences are shown to exist in terms of the number of animations used in the web page, the graphical density and length of the web page, navigation menu display, colour and family, male and female related im-ages. In addition, it was found that majority of the web sites from the sample does not cater for language of different users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time, distributed, collaborative writing systems are useful tools allowing a group of distributed authors to work on a document simultaneously. A very important factor in achieving effective and efficient collaborative writing is the incorporation of group awareness (GA). GA conveniently provides comprehensive knowledge about the status of a document and activities other authors perform upon the document. However, far more work needs to be carried out in determining exactly what awareness elements (awareness information, such as where users are viewing within a document versus where they are working on a document) are required in collaborative writing. This involves empirically determining which elements are more important than others for support. The authors report results and findings of an empirical, laboratory-based study of GA elements. These findings are completely novel since no other empirical study of GA elements has been done. The findings guide designers in developing relevant mechanisms supporting GA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designers normally create three-dimensional images on paper. As a natural extension of this, we are developing a design support system that will enable people to draw 3D lines in 3D space directly. However, we first need to better understand how people behave when sketching in three-dimensional space and then design a user interface that supports natural 3D sketching. This paper describes the experiment we conducted to quantitatively analyze the diverse aspects of this behavior. The experiment clarified the characteristics of 3D drawing, particularly the effect of the drawing location, the perception of depth, the sense of balance, the direct/indirect input method, and the preferred drawing direction. We propose improving the user interface by using the metaphor of "shadow" and the metaphor of "hand mirror" to promote the user's awareness of errors and/or by using "adaptive rotation" to improve the user's comfort when sketching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We previously developed a prototype system called "Godzilla" that supports creative design, specifically by car-exterior designers. Godzilla provides an environment in which designers can draw concept image on a 2D pad (a tablet with an LCD), and when they hold the image in midair, the shape of the 2D sketch is automatically recognized and appears as a 3D sketch displayed on a 3D pad (stereovision TVs). Designers can sketch, modify, and view their drawings from different viewpoints in either two or three dimensions. The 3D images are not displayed as beautiful CG images, but as 3D sketches that consist of many 3D cursive lines produced by mimicking the designer's pen touch. Although Godzilla was successfully used on a trial basis at an automobile manufacturer, it has serious drawbacks: (1) the designable shapes are limited to those of cars, (2) the 2D and 3D view areas are separated, and (3) the equipment is expensive. We have now extended Godzilla to overcome these draw-backs: (1) free form design is possible using a combination of seven primitives, (2) presentation is seamless between the 2D and 3D spaces, and (3) off-the-shelf equipment is used. We devised a recognition technique that uses a topology matrix and implemented a user interface for transforming and manipulating the recognized primitives. Two preliminary experiments demonstrated the effectiveness of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When using computer keyboard in a multilingual environment, due to different languages and input methods, it requires switching back and forth between input modes. Although computer keyboard design has been discussed in numerous literatures, however, the colors of characters printed on the keys used for multiple input method has not been investigated. Along with the introduction of the intelligent "modeless" input method, the color-coding of the characters used on keyboard and how it impacts the performance need to be evaluated. A series of three experiments using Chinese and English as input text were conducted and the results show that keyboards with color-coding im-proved the performances, especially when typing text mixed with English and Chinese. The use of modeless input method also outperformed the traditional approach. And the color-coding particularly improved the performance of modeless input method for mixed input text. The results are discussed with motor program theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobile phone has become the most widely used communication medium in the world, making our lives simpler by delivering services into our palms. Texting - using a mobile phone to send a text message - has become a form of mass communication. The effectiveness of many computing systems can be proven with objective tests and quantifiable results. Text entry methods on mobile phones however, interface directly and intimately with the end user. Developing a high-fidelity (typically, highly interactive) prototype for a new mobile text entry system is not an easy task. This paper describes the conceptualization, design and development of a prototyping framework for text entry research on mobile devices. The primary goal of the framework is to help text entry researchers produce high-fidelity working prototypes of their concept. It aims to ease development effort and maximize reusability of code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a method for identifying clickable objects/regions in still and moving images when they are being captured. A number of methods and languages have recently been proposed for adding point-and-click interactivity to objects in moving pictures as well as still images. When these pictures are displayed in Internet environments or broadcast on digital TV channels, users can follow links specified by URLs (e.g., for buying items online or getting detailed information about a particular item) by clicking on these objects. However, it is not easy to specify clickable areas of objects in a video because their position is liable to change from one frame to the next. To cope with this problem, our method allows content creators to capture moving (and still) images with information related to objects that appear in these images including the coordinates of the clickable areas of these objects in the captured images. This is achieved by capturing the images at various infrared wavelengths simultaneously. This is also applicable to multi-target motion capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demonstrations are ubiquitous in the world of information systems development, but it is not clear what role they play. It is contended that demonstrations are an informal attempt to examine issues of usefulness and usability, insofar as they bring together the technology, the user, genuine tasks and the organizational context. This raises the question, How well are new technologies and their use represented in demonstrations? An interview study with experienced demonstrators and audiences is reported and investigated in terms of Goffman's frame analysis. Demonstrations are interpreted as a kind of theatrical performance in which the situation of use is acted out. Various types of potential misrepresentation are identified in the study, including simulated and exaggerated functionality, serendipitous interaction paths and the manipulation of demonstrator credibility. It is argued that these distortions may mask the importance of human-computer interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a tool to support the rapid and adaptive deployment of a collaborative, ubiquitous computing environment. A key tool for the configuration and deployment of this environment is a calibration tool to quickly and efficiently calculate the positions of cameras in a dynamic environment. This tool has been incorporated into our current Passive Detection Framework. The paper describes the context where our rapidly adaptive collaborative ubiquitous computing environment would be deployed. The results of a study to test the accuracy of the calibration tool are also presented. This study found that the calibration tool can calculate the position of cameras to within 25 mm for all lighting conditions examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]