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RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: center dot A qualitative study of Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) and their challenges during the Covid-19 Pandemic. center dot GVT members became proactive in dealing with the challenges of 100% remote working. center dot GVTs adapt their methods of working and the tools available to them. center dot Communication failures, building trust and relationships, and resolving conflict are significant challenges. center dot Lack of informal communication opportunities adversely affects relationships in GVTs. center dot Further investigation of gender differences in attitudes and practices are prompted; and the associations between trust and conflict resolution in virtual relationships. Virtual work introduces distinct challenges when compared to face-to-face or on-site work. Communication and collaboration are key factors in team development and in team performance. When teamwork is of a global nature, imposed because of a pandemic, then additional variables are introduced into the equation. The challenges that global virtual teams (GVTs) encounter when communicating and developing in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic impacts how work is structured and teams develop. This qualitative study was conducted just over 1 year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when working from home became mandatory and particular challenges for GVTs became apparent. Data are gathered through an online anonymous survey and followed by semi-structured video-mediated interviews with staff in a large multinational software development company. Findings show that GVTs encounter a number of distinct challenges than face-to-face teams. However, individuals are actively adapting to the situation in which they find themselves and are learning to deal with the challenges by being proactive. Even though the tools used previously may not be entirely suitable for virtual work, GVTs learn to change how tools are used to be more productive and collaborative. Challenges continue to exist in areas, such as knowledge gathering and knowledge sharing. Communication failures can lead to delays and confusion. The findings also indicate that even though GVTs are not communicating as much informally or socially with their colleagues because of remote working in the pandemic, being remote is not having a negative effect on the ability to get work done. Some aspects of team development can be negatively affected when working in GVTs. Impacts are identified relating to trust and relationship building, as well as being able to identify and resolve conflict. These results prompt further research opportunities as organizations and individuals continue to adapt and embrace global virtual teamwork.

Correct classification of fractures according to their patterns is critical for developing a treatment plan in orthopaedic surgery. Unfortunately, for proximal humeral fractures (PHF), methods for proper classification have remained a jigsaw puzzle that has not yet been fully solved despite numerous proposed classifications and diagnostic methods. Recently, many studies have suggested that three-dimensional printed models (3DPM) can improve the interobserver agreement on PHF classifications. Moreover, Virtual Reality (VR) has not been properly studied for classification of shoulder injuries. The current study investigates the PHF classification accuracy relative to an expert committee when using either 3DPM or equivalent models displayed in VR among 36 orthopaedic surgery residents from different hospitals. We designed a multicentric randomised controlled trial in which we created two groups: a group exposed to a total of 34 3DPM and another exposed to VR equivalents. Association between classification accuracy and group assignment (VR/3DPM) was assessed using mixed effects logistic regression models. The results showed VR can be considered a non-inferior technology for classifying PHF when compared to 3DPM. Moreover, VR may be preferable when considering possible time and resource savings along with potential uses of VR for presurgical planning in orthopaedics. CC BY 4.0© 2023, The Author(s)Published: 04 February 2023Funding for open access publishing: Universidad Málaga/CBUA.

An integral part of seamless human-human communication is engagement, the process by which two or more participants establish, maintain, and end their perceived connection. Therefore, to develop successful human-centered human-machine interaction applications, automatic engagement inference is one of the tasks required to achieve engaging interactions between humans and machines, and to make machines attuned to their users, hence enhancing user satisfaction and technology acceptance. Several factors contribute to engagement state inference, which include the interaction context and interactants' behaviours and identity. Indeed, engagement is a multi-faceted and multi-modal construct that requires high accuracy in the analysis and interpretation of contextual, verbal and non-verbal cues. Thus, the development of an automated and intelligent system that accomplishes this task has been proven to be challenging so far. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on previous work in engagement inference for human-machine interaction, entailing interdisciplinary definition, engagement components and factors, publicly available datasets, ground truth assessment, and most commonly used features and methods, serving as a guide for the development of future human-machine interaction interfaces with reliable context-aware engagement inference capability. An in-depth review across embodied and disembodied interaction modes, and an emphasis on the interaction context of which engagement perception modules are integrated sets apart the presented survey from existing surveys.

Child behaviour is a topic of great scientific interest across a wide range of disciplines, including social sciences and artificial intelligence (AI). Knowledge in these different fields is not yet integrated to its full potential. The aim of this workshop was to bring researchers from these fields together. The first two workshops had a significant impact. In this workshop, we discussed topics such as the use of AI techniques to better examine and model interactions and children’s emotional development, analyzing head movement patterns with respect to child age. This workshop was a successful new step towards the objective of bridging social sciences and AI, attracting contributions from various academic fields on child behaviour analysis. This document summarizes the accepted papers.

‘Time’ and ‘temporality’ are increasingly addressed in human-computer interaction (HCI) research. From issues related to mapping and visualizing data along timelines via explorations of temporality as a design material to studies of lag and the rhythms of work, time is a recurring perspective in HCI research. In fact, time has been a recurring aspect in HCI research for the past 30 years. Based on this continuous and growing interest in HCI research, we find it to be a good time to explore if ‘time’ can be used as a way to structure and organize HCI research. In this paper, we make one such attempt based on a literature study in which we have focused on how time and temporality has been addressed in HCI research during the past 30 years. In our overview of the field, we explore how time and temporality has played out in HCI along the two dimensions of what and how it has been studied. Based on these two dimensions, we created a 4 × 4 matrix that allowed us to filter the material and categorize HCI research in relation to time and temporality. As a result of our explorations, we have identified a turn to temporality as a design material in HCI, an interest in methods for temporality studies in HCI and in temporality as a theoretical lens. We end with a discussion of some implications of our findings around the notions of (i) waves of time and temporality studies in HCI research, (ii) the potential use of the 4 × 4 matrix and (iii) the consequences of a more fundamental shift from things to events.

Growing and even excessive use of digital technology has unquestionably fuelled demand for digital devices and online services leading to a wide range of societal and environmental impacts. In sustainability terms, ICT as a whole is estimated to produce up to nearly 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As presumed responsible innovators, the HCI community should now consider design strategies that will reduce use and demand for digital technology for the good of both its users and the planet-strategies perhaps even seen as retrogressive in an era where digital technology is constantly implicated in innovation and economic growth. Prior work has noted the potential to design "more moderate" interactions for sustainability, simultaneously addressing negative societal impacts on users' wellbeing, relationships, productivity at work, and privacy. In this paper, we explore how we may design intentionally moderate digital interactions that retain our participants' "more meaningful" experiences. We report on the outcomes of two design workshops to uncover experiences of meaningful device and service use, to inform practical designs for 'moderate and meaningful' interaction. From this, we offer design recommendations that aim to address the multiple negative impacts that digital technology can create, and discuss the possible barriers to these designs.

The purpose of the study is to explore when and how technology becomes a topic in interactions involving people with dementia and their carers. Three dyads of older women with dementia and their carers participated in the study. The dyads interacted in the home environments of the persons with dementia using tablet computers and two web-based applications with generic pictures, videos, and music files (CIRCA) and personalized pictures and films (CIRCUS). The data included twenty-one video-recorded interactions. Topical episode analysis and transcripts of interaction were used to analyze and exemplify when and how technology was talked about in the dyads. The dyads were engaged in exploring the tablets, and six common ways of making technology a topic of conversation were identified: talk about tech problems, commenting actions, expressing uncertainty in navigation, instructing and explaining, expressing surprise, and talk about technical development. The dyads explored the tablets in ways that were reflected in the content of their conversations. If people with dementia and their carers should benefit from todays technology, such as there is evidence for the interactions examined in this study, their homes and daily environments must be equipped with sufficient internet access and technical support. Funding Agencies|Linkoping University; Horizon 2020; FORTE: Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare

Learning from demonstration allows for rapid deployment of robot manipulators to a great many tasks, by relying on a person showing the robot what to do rather than programming it. While this approach provides many opportunities, measuring, evaluating, and improving the person’s teaching ability has remained largely unexplored in robot manipulation research. To this end, a model for learning from demonstration is presented here that incorporates the teacher’s understanding of, and influence on, the learner. The proposed model is used to clarify the teacher’s objectives during learning from demonstration, providing new views on how teaching failures and efficiency can be defined. The benefit of this approach is shown in two experiments ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively), which highlight the difficulty teachers have in providing effective demonstrations, and show how [Formula: see text]–180% improvement in teaching efficiency can be achieved through evaluation and feedback shaped by the proposed framework, relative to unguided teaching.

Many organizations are pursuing the implementation of chatbots to enable automation of service processes. However, previous research has highlighted the existence of practical setbacks in the implementation of chatbots in corporate environments. To gain practical insights on the issues related to the implementation processes from several perspectives and stages of deployment, we conducted semi-structured interviews with developers and experts of chatbot development. Using qualitative content analysis and based on a review of literature on human computer interaction (HCI), information systems (IS), and chatbots, we present an implementation framework that supports the successful deployment of chatbots and discuss the implementation of chatbots through a user-oriented lens. The proposed framework contains 101 guiding questions to support chatbot implementation in an eight-step process. The questions are structured according to the people, activity, context, and technology (PACT) framework. The adapted PACT framework is evaluated through expert interviews and a focus group discussion (FGD) and is further applied in a case study. The framework can be seen as a bridge between science and practice that serves as a notional structure for practitioners to introduce a chatbot in a structured and user-oriented manner.

In this article, we compare three different input technologies (gamepad, vision-based motion controls, room-scale) for an interactive virtual reality (VR) environment. The overall system is able to visualize (open) data from multiple online sources in a unified interface, enabling the user to browse and explore displayed information in an immersive VR setting. We conducted a user interaction study (n=24; n=8 per input technology, between-group design) to investigate experienced workload and perceived flow of interaction. Log files and observations allowed further insights and comparison of each condition. We have identified trends that indicate user preference of a visual (virtual) representation, but no clear trends regarding the application of physical controllers (over vision-based controls), in a scenario that encouraged exploration with no time limitations. Open Data Exploration in Virtual Reality (ODxVR)

New technology and smart homes have the potential to improve quality of life, safety, and care for older people. However, we do not yet know how older people's perceptions of these technologies may vary, in particular how views based on experience of actual use may differ from those related to anticipated use. We also do not know how older people living independently might view technology that may be of future rather than current value to them. This paper explores older people's views of smart home monitoring technology and compares these between people with direct experience and those without. Four focus groups were conducted with six older people recruited from the community with no smart home experience and seven drawn from a large-scale Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration that is developing a sensor platform for health and lifestyle at home. For the seven participants, the sensor platform was installed and operated in their homes for eight to twelve months before the current study. The study found that participants in each group had some similar and some different understandings of smart home technologies. Among participants who had already tried the smart home monitoring technology, acceptance increased over time and with use. They expressed fewer concerns than non smart homes participants regarding privacy, trust, usability, and more concerns about utility. Non smart home participants focused on the extent to which this technology might increase household's vulnerability and they considered the technology somewhat intrusive and noticeable. It appeared that the more positive views of participants who had direct experience of smart homes related to the degree of trust between them and the researchers who installed and maintained the smart home system. Both groups of participants shared views about the technical feasibility, affordability, impact on relationships, and about the engagement and competencies of those who would view the monitoring data. They suggested that the technology would be more acceptable if it was possible to customize functionality and features. These findings have implications for development of smart home technologies so that they are appropriate and acceptable to older people who are living independently. QCR 20201124

Collaborative systems support shared spaces, where groups of users exchange interactions. In order to ensure the usability of these systems, an intuitive interactions´ organization and that each user has awareness information to know the activity of others are necessary. Usability laboratories allow evaluators to verify these requirements. However, laboratory usability evaluations can be problematic for reproducing mobile and ubiquitous contexts, as they restrict the place and time in which the user interacts with the system. This paper presents a framework for building software support that it collects human?machine interactions in mobile and ubiquitous contexts and outputs an assessment of the system´s usability. This framework is constructed through learning that is based on neural networks, identifying sequences of interactions related to usability problems when users carry out collaborative activities. The paper includes a case study that puts the framework into action during the development process of a smartphone application that supports collaborative sport betting. This research and the APC was funded by the University of Cantabria and the Government of Cantabria through the industrial doctorate grant DI27, given to Santos Bringas. Alicia Nieto-Reyes was supported by a Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades grant MTM2017-86061-C2-2-P.

The work is devoted to the review of the development the human-computer interaction. In the first sections the history of computing in the "pre-computer" era is briefly described and then the early history of modern computing, methods of the first computers controlling and the tasks of programmers at this stage are described. It describes the methods of interaction with the first -generation computers using the remote control elements, punched cards and punched tapes. The section, devoted to the second generation computers, describes the emergence of high-level operating systems and programming languages. At this point, there are such means of interaction with the computer as the displays and, respectively, such programming tools as interactive languages and interactive debuggers. Research is also beginning on principles of human-computer interaction the infancy of the discipline "computer graphics", the development of computer graphics packages and the emergence of interactive computer graphics standards are considered. In the section “Revolutions in computer science” describes the appearance of a large number of the same series computers and the first super-computers in the context of human-computer interaction. Revolutionary changes are considered in computer graphics and emerging of the science discipline “computer visualization” with its parts “scientific visualization”, “software visualization”, “information visualization” and also “programming by demonstration”. The information about the attempt to create a fifth generation computer based on logical programming is given. It is told about the initial period of teaching programming. The creation of computer networks and the emergence of personal computing as well as the creation the tools of modern parallel computing have become the important stages in the development of modern computing. The virtual reality becomes an important computer visualization tool. The modern state of human-computer interfaces is characterized primarily by emerging of natural interfaces which can be attributed Brain-Computer Interface (Neurocomputer interface, Brain-Computer Interfaces), interfaces based on the direct use of nerve impulses, speech recognition, recognition of lip movement, mimic recognition and eye tracking (Eye Gaze or Eye Tracking), haptic interfaces and also interfaces giving tactile feedback (allowing you to feel the touch),motion capture interfaces the entire human body or individual organs (head, entire arm, hands, fingers, legs), motion capture toolkits,in particular, interfaces based on leg movements (foot-operated computer interfaces), sign interfaces, sign languages. We briefly describe the activity approach to the design of interfaces and also some problems concerning the problem of mass interfaces. Finally, we discuss a number of problems arising from the increasing capabilities of modern computers. The work is in the nature of a popular science article and it largely reflects the subjective impressions of the author. © 2020 National Research Nuclear University. All rights reserved.

Background Previously, we introduced our Patient Health Information Dialogue Ontology (PHIDO) that manages the dialogue and contextual information of the session between an agent and a health consumer. In this study, we take the next step and introduce the Conversational Ontology Operator (COO), the software engine harnessing PHIDO. We also developed a question-answering subsystem called Frankenstein Ontology Question-Answering for User-centric Systems (FOQUS) to support the dialogue interaction. Methods We tested both the dialogue engine and the question-answering system using application-based competency questions and questions furnished from our previous Wizard of OZ simulation trials. Results Our results revealed that the dialogue engine is able to perform the core tasks of communicating health information and conversational flow. Inter-rater agreement and accuracy scores among four reviewers indicated perceived, acceptable responses to the questions asked by participants from the simulation studies, yet the composition of the responses was deemed mediocre by our evaluators. Conclusions Overall, we present some preliminary evidence of a functioning ontology-based system to manage dialogue and consumer questions. Future plans for this work will involve deploying this system in a speech-enabled agent to assess its usage with potential health consumer users.

The sharing and reuse of data are seen as critical to solving the most complex problems of today. Despite this potential, relatively little is known about a key step in data reuse: people's behaviours involved in data-centric sensemaking. We aim to address this gap by presenting a mixed-methods study combining in-depth interviews, a think-aloud task and a screen recording analysis with 31 researchers as they summarised and interacted with both familiar and unfamiliar data. We use our findings to identify and detail common activity patterns and necessary data attributes across three clusters of sensemaking activities: inspecting data, engaging with content, and placing data within broader contexts. We conclude by proposing design recommendations for tools and documentation practices which can be used to facilitate sensemaking and subsequent data reuse., 26 pages, 7 figures, 6 tables

[EN] Wellness state is affected by the habitability state of the domestic environment. Monitoring it can help to discover the causes of a low wellness levels aiding people in the improvement of their quality of life. In this paper, we propose a system to monitor the wellness state of people utilizing Likert¿s scale to determine the state of the user through an emoticon-based human¿computer interaction. The system is intended for domestic environments and measures the habitability conditions of the dwelling (such as temperature, humidity, luminosity and noise) employing sensors. An algorithm is designed in order to establish how to measure those conditions and to calculate the statistics that allows tracking their progress. The obtained information is presented to the user to compare his/her wellness state with the habitability conditions. Measures in a real domestic environment were performed in order to determine the configuration of our system. The energy efficiency of the algorithm provides an improvement between 99.36 and 99.62% in the energy consumption depending on the selected parameters., This work has been partially supported by the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación”, through the “Plan Nacional de I+D+i 2008–2011” and by the “Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte”, through the grand “Ayudas para contratos predoctorales de Formación del Profesorado Universitario FPU14/02953”.

This article introduces user experience research that has been carried out by evaluating a video-illustrated science fiction prototype with process control workers. Essentially, the prototype 'A remote operator's day in a future control center in 2025' was aimed at discovering opportunities for new interaction methods and ambient intelligence for the factories of the future. The theoretical objective was to carry out experience design research, which was based on explicit ambient user experience goals in the nominated industrial work context. This article describes the complete creative prototyping process, starting from the initial user research that included evaluations of current work practices, technological trend studies and co-design workshops, and concluding with user research that assessed the final design outcome, the science fiction prototype. The main contribution of the article is on the ambient user experience goals, the creation process of the video-illustrated science fiction prototype, and on the reflection of how the experience-driven prototype was evaluated in two research setups: as video sequences embedded in a Web survey, and as interviews carried out with expert process control workers. For the science fiction prototyping process, the contribution demonstrates how the method may employ video-illustration as a means for future-oriented user experience research, and how complementary user-centered methods may be used to validate the results.

Improving audio production tools provides a great opportunity for meaningful enhancement of creative activities due to the disconnect between existing tools and the conceptual frameworks within which many people work. In our work, we focus on bridging the gap between the intentions of both amateur and professional musicians and the audio manipulation tools available through software. Rather than force nonintuitive interactions, or remove control altogether, we reframe the controls to work within the interaction paradigms identified by research done on how audio engineers and musicians communicate auditory concepts to each other: evaluative feedback, natural language, vocal imitation, and exploration. In this article, we provide an overview of our research on building audio production tools, such as mixers and equalizers, to support these kinds of interactions. We describe the learning algorithms, design approaches, and software that support these interaction paradigms in the context of music and audio production. We also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the interaction approach we describe in comparison with existing control paradigms.

International audience; The needs of future digital data and computer systems are expected to be two to three orders of magnitude larger than for today's systems, to take account of unprecedented amounts of heterogeneous hardware, lines of source code, numbers of users, and volumes of data. Ultrascale computing systems (UCS) are a solution. Envisioned as large-scale complex systems joining parallel and distributed computing systems, which can be located at multiple sites and cooperate to provide the required resources and performance to the users, these technologies will extend individual systems to provide the resources that are very much needed. Based on the research work in the COST Action IC 1305 Network for Sustainable Ultrascale Computing (NESUS) this book presents important results and methods towards achieving sustainable UCS. The authors present a wide range of emerging programming models that facilitate the task of scaling and extracting performance on continuously evolving platforms, while providing resilience and fault-tolerant mechanisms to tackle the increasing probability of failures throughout the entire software stack. These methods are needed to achieve scale handling, better programmability and adaptation to rapidly changing underlying computing architecture, data centric programming models, resilience, and energy-efficiency.

Intelligent Assistive Systems (IASs) provide personalised support to individuals to increase their autonomy and competence in performing activities. The personalisation of such technology represents a particular challenge, for the individuals abilities typically change over time. The aim of this research was to explore a theory-based, activity-centred framework for the development of IASs that both facilitate the active involvement of caregivers and target users and allow for adaptation to the individual over time. Medication management was focused on as a case study. Three older adults and two caregivers were involved in a co-design process of an IAS prototype system, the MED-AR, which uses projection-based augmented reality as the user interface technology. The theoretical framework for the design and evaluation of the MED-AR was activity theory. For the decision-making process of the MED-AR, formal argumentation theory was used. The major contributions of the study are (i) a formal framework for understanding the level of independence in activities and the way an IAS can tailor support to an individual and a situation, including caregivers; and (ii) a model for involving older adults and caregivers in a co-design process in the first phases of developing IASs.

The pre-show experience is a significant part of the movie industry. Moviegoers, on average arrive 24 min before when the previews start. Previews have been a part of the movie experience for more than a hundred years and are a culturally significant aspect of the whole experience. Over the last decade, the pre-movie in-theatre experience has grown to a $600 million industry. This growth continues to accelerate. Since 2012, this industry has increased by 150%. Consequently, there is an industry-wide demand for innovation in the pre-movie area. In this paper, we describe Paths, an innovative multiplayer real-time socially engaging game that we designed, developed and evaluated. An iterative refinement application development methodology was used to create the game. The game may be played on any smartphone and group interactions are viewed on the large theatre screen. This paper also reports on the quasi-experimental mixed method study with repeated measures that was conducted to ascertain the effectiveness of this new game. The results show that Paths is very engaging with elements of suspense, pleasant unpredictability and effective team building and crowd-pleasing characteristics.

A Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) is a widely used security defense mechanism that is utilized by service providers to determine whether the entity interacting with their system is a human and not a malicious agent. Common design practices of current CAPTCHA schemes barely take into account cultural, contextual, and individual cognitive characteristics and abilities of users. Motivated by recent research which underpins the necessity for designing more user-friendly CAPTCHA, this paper investigates the effect of users' cognitive styles and cognitive processing abilities towards preference and task performance of CAPTCHA challenges. In the frame of the reported research, two user studies were conducted. The first study (n=131) explored the effect of users' cognitive styles (Verbal/Imager) on user preference and task performance of two complementary types of CAPTCHA mechanisms text-recognition and image-recognition. The second study (n=125) explored the effect of users' cognitive processing abilities (speed of processing, controlled attention, working memory capacity) on task performance in regards with different levels of complexity of both text-recognition and image-recognition CAPTCHA. Analysis of results revealed interaction effects of users' cognitive processing characteristics towards preference and performance of CAPTCHA, suggesting that individual differences at such an intrinsic level are important to be considered for designing more usable and user-centric CAPTCHA challenges. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 84 1 18 Cited By :5

Addressing ecient management of energy has become a central objective due to the scarcity of traditional energy sources and global warming. To cope with this overarching issue, some technological solutions such as Smart Grids, Internet of Things or Demand response are proposed. However, the majority of them overlooks the role of human beings in the equation. Moreover, the very nascent body of research combining human and machine intelligence proposes methods, frameworks, and guidelines which vary depending on the application scenario complicating the selection of gold-standards to ensure seamless cooperation between smart devices and people. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide a set of design-hypotheses to devise augmented objects that ally with their users to reduce energy consumption. We expect designers, engineers, makers or even hobbyists in the intersection between technology-enablers (through IoT) and behavioural scientists to benet from them. To this aim, we describe the results of a long-term study in oce-based workplaces, where participants were randomly assigned to dierent experimental conditions (persuasion, dashboard, and automation) to increase their energy-ecient behaviour. Grounded Theory analysis was applied over qualitative data collected during focus group sessions obtaining ve themes around a central category. The resulting themes were linked to design-hypotheses for IoT devices which were then tested through the implementation of a new IoT object also conceived for the workplace.

This paper presents an experiment aimed at exploring the relation between facial actions (FA), heart rate (HR) and emotional states, particularly stress and boredom, during the interaction with games. Subjects played three custom-made games with a linear and constant progression from a boring to a stressful state, without pre-defined levels, modes or stopping conditions. Such configuration gives our experiment a novel approach for the exploration of FA and HR regarding their connection to emotional states, since we can categorize information according to the induced (and theoretically known) emotional states on a user level. The HR data was divided into segments, whose HR mean was calculated and compared in periods (boring/stressful part of the games). Additionally the 6 h of recordings were manually analyzed and FA were annotated and categorized in the same periods. Findings show that variations of HR and FA on a group and on an individual level are different when comparing boring and stressful parts of the gaming sessions. This paper contributes information regarding variations of HR and FA in the context of games, which can potentially be used as input candidates to create user-tailored models for emotion detection with game-based emotion elicitation sources.

The OMERO 2.0 system (Organized Multimodal Exploration of Relevant Virtual Objects) is an innovative system that enables visually impaired users to explore and edit 3D virtual models. It involves three interaction modalities: visual, haptic and auditory. Virtual models are properly designed to convey the information of interest in a polymorphous and redundant way: the user can therefore choose the sensorial modalities best suited to his/her characteristics, accounting for specific limitations and/or impairments. Virtual models are specially organized to help visually impaired people in building an integrated mental scheme of complex realities (cultural heritage objects and sites, large buildings, abstract concepts in fields such as geometry or chemistry etc.): a challenging task when using a serial sense such as touch. Different semantic layers of the scene (scenarios) convey logically different views of the scene at hand and can be selected separately or in combination depending on the user’s needs: that prevents users from being overwhelmed by too many simultaneous details. The software tools used in this new version of OMERO increase the generality of the system and support a larger number of haptic devices. Moreover, the completely new Interactive Haptic Editor of OMERO offers an innovative haptic interface: the haptic properties of the virtual models can be edited even without using the GUI. This redundant combination of vision and touch improves the efficiency for sighted people and enables visually impaired users (that cannot use a GUI) to modify autonomously the rendering of virtual scenes. This results in their active involvement even in the design phase, improving their ability to match the rendering with their specific and individual needs.

Ontologies are complex systems of axioms in which unanticipated consequences of changes are both frequent, and diffcult for ontology authors to apprehend. The effects of modelling actions range from unintended inferences to outright defects such as incoherency or even inconsistency. One of the central ontology authoring activities is verifying that a particular modelling step has had the intended consequences, often with the help of reasoners. For users ofProtégé, this involves, for example, exploring the inferred class hierarchy.This paper provides evidence that making entailment set changes explicit to authors significantly improves the understanding of authoring actions regarding both correctness and speed. This is tested by means of the InferenceInspector, a Protégé plugin we created that provides authors with specific details about the effects of an authoring action. We empirically validate the effectiveness of the Inference Inspector in two studies. In a first, exploratory study we determine the feasibility of the Inference Inspector for supporting verification and isolating authoring actions. In a second, controlled study we formally evaluate the Inference Inspector and determine that making changes to key entailment sets explicit significantly improves author verification compared to the standard static hierarchy/framebased approach. We discuss the advantages of the Inference Inspector for different types of verification questions and find that our approach is best suited for verifying added restrictions where no new signature, such as class names, is introduced, with a 42% improvement in verification correctness.

Augmented Reality has been successfully applied in training and maintenance scenarios. Previous work has been commonly targeted at industrial specific purposes, sometimes requiring hardware which is out of budget for small and micro enterprises, let alone the average user. Some systems are mobile based, and while these can be classified as accessible, the realm of application is determined by the authoring companies, the average user can only play the instructions, or scripts, provided by the software provider. We present a framework that provides the user with the ability to write their own scripts packages, upload these packages to mobile devices and play the scripts in an augmented reality setting. Besides requiring only widely available hardware, namely a PC and a mobile device, the framework does not require 3D models of the subject of intervention to define the scripts. Furthermore, this framework aims at being extensible, i.e. it allows new behaviours to be defined so it can theoretically adapt to a wide range of scenarios. In short, we provide an affordable and easy to use augmented reality based framework which is suitable for small and micro enterprises, and even hobbyists., This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01- 0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundac¸ao para a Ci ˜ encia e ˆ Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013., info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This paper reports the design and assessment of a neuro-fuzzy model to support clinicians during virtual reality therapy. The implemented model is able to automatically recognize the perceived stress levels of the patients by analyzing physiological and behavioral data during treatment. The model, consisting of a self-organizingmap and a fuzzy-rule-basedmodule, was trained unobtrusively recording electrocardiogram, breath rate and activity during stress inoculation provided by the exposure to virtual environments. Twenty nurses were exposed to sessions simulating typical stressful situations experienced at their workplace. Four levels of stress severity were evaluated for each subject by gold standard clinical scales administered by trained personnel. The model's performances were discussed and compared with the main machine learning algorithms. The neurofuzzy model shows better performances in terms of stress level classification with 83% of mean recognition rate.

Player-centered approaches that aim to maximize player enjoyment have been steady, but with poor heuristics that do not rely on any particular theory of entertainment. Certainly, the Theory of Flow is the most referred in the game AI area and, still, it is unclear how to effectively design and implement adaptive game modules or understanding which game features drive players to a flow state. Therefore, in this document we perform a systematic analysis of literature aimed to enhance our knowledge about how to adapt flow heuristics to a video game context. This analysis endows us with the knowledge needed to define a flow framework for game AI. Our framework, FlowAI, describes which modules and what gameplay features can be adapted to design an effective video game intended to facilitate the achievement of flow in players. Furthermore, from our framework standpoint, we identify and review existing work that could be adjusted to foster flow. Our aim with this analysis is to identify current challenges, and motivate new directions in the player-centered research area. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

The availability of powerful consumer-level smart devices and off-the-shelf software frameworks has tremendously popularized augmented reality (AR) applications. However, since the built-in cameras typically have rather limited field of view, it is usually preferable to position AR tools built upon these devices at a distance when large objects need to be tracked for augmentation. This arrangement makes it difficult or even impossible to physically interact with the augmented object. One solution is to adopt third person perspective (TPP) with which the smart device shows in real time the object to be interacted with, the AR information and the user herself, all captured by a remote camera. Through mental transformation between the user-centric coordinate space and the coordinate system of the remote camera, the user can directly interact with objects in the real world. To evaluate user performance under this cognitively demanding situation, we developed such an experimental TPP AR system and conducted experiments which required subjects to make markings on a whiteboard according to virtual marks displayed by the AR system. The same markings were also made manually with a ruler. We measured the precision of the markings as well as the time to accomplish the task. Our results show that although the AR approach was on average around half a centimeter less precise than the manual measurement, it was approximately three times as fast as the manual counterpart. Additionally, we also found that subjects could quickly adapt to the mental transformation between the two coordinate systems.

Clinical Decision Support Systems can alert health professionals about drug interactions when they prescribe medications. The Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires in Argentina developed an electronic health record with drug-drug interaction alerts, using traditional software engineering techniques and requirements. Despite enhancing the drug-drug interaction knowledge database, the alert override rate of this system was very high. We redesigned the alert system using user-centered design (UCD) and participatory design techniques to enhance the drug-drug interaction alert interface. This paper describes the methodology of our UCD. We used crossover method with realistic, clinical vignettes to compare usability of the standard and new software versions in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction. Our study showed that, compared to the traditional alert system, the UCD alert system was more efficient (alerts faster resolution), more effective (tasks completed with fewer errors), and more satisfying. These results indicate that UCD techniques that follow ISO 9241-210 can generate more usable alerts than traditional design. Fil: Luna, Daniel Roberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Hospital Italiano; Argentina. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: Rizzato Lede, Daniel A.. Hospital Italiano; Argentina Fil: Otero, Carlos Martin. Hospital Italiano; Argentina Fil: Risk, Marcelo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: González Bernaldo de Quirós, Fernán. Hospital Italiano; Argentina

[EN] Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is a research field which aims to improve the relationship between users and interactive computer systems. A main objective of this research area is to make the user experience more pleasant and efficient, minimizing the barrier between the users' cognition of what they want to accomplish and the computer's understanding of the user's tasks, by means of userfriendly, useful and usable designs. A bad HCI design is one of the main reasons behind user rejection of computer-based applications, which in turn produces loss of productivity and economy in industrial environments. In the eHealth domain, user rejection of computer-based systems is a major barrier to exploiting the maximum benefit from those applications developed to support the treatment of diseases, and in the worst cases a poor design in these systems may cause deterioration in the clinical condition of the patient. Thus, a high level of personalisation of the system according to users' needs is extremely important, making it easy to use and contributing to the system's efficacy, which in turn facilitates the empowerment of the target users. Ideally, the content offered through the interactive sessions in these applications should be continuously assessed and adapted to the changing condition of the patient. A good HCI design and development can improve the acceptance of these applications and contribute to promoting better adherence levels to the treatment, preventing the patient from further relapses. In this work, we present a mechanism to provide personalised and adaptive daily interactive sessions focused on the treatment of patients with Major Depression. These sessions are able to automatically adapt the content and length of the sessions to obtain personalised and varied sessions in order to encourage the continuous and long-term use of the system. The tailored adaptation of session content is supported by decision-making processes based on: (i) clinical requirements; (ii) the patient's historical data; and (iii) current responses from the patient. We have evaluated our system through two different methodologies: the first one performing a set of simulations producing different sessions from changing input conditions, in order to assess different levels of adaptability and variability of the session content offered by the system. The second evaluation process involved a set of patients who used the system for 14 to 28 days and answered a questionnaire to provide feedback about the perceived level of adaptability and variability produced by the system. The obtained results in both evaluations indicated good levels of adaptability and variability in the content of the sessions according to the input conditions., E. Fuster Garcia acknowledges the financial support from the "Torres Quevedo" program (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) co-funded by the European Social Fund (PTQ-12-05693), and the financial support from the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia under the Grant "Ayudas Para la Contratacion de Doctores para el Acceso al Sistema Espanol de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion" (PAID-10-14).

Human interaction develops as an exchange of contributions between participants. The construction of a contribution is not an activity unilaterally created by the participant who produces it, but rather it constitutes a combined activity between the producer and the rest of the participants who take part in the interaction, by means of simultaneous feedback. This paper presents an incremental approach (without losing sight of how turns are produced throughout time), in which the interpretation of contributions is done as they take place, and the final generated contributions are the result of constant rectifications, reformulations and cancellations of the initially formulated contributions. The Continuity Manager and the Processes Coordinator components are proposed. The integration of these components in natural interaction systems allow for a joint approach to these problems. Both have been implemented and evaluated in a real framework called LaBDA-Interactor System which has been applied to the "dictation domain". We found that the degree of naturalness of this turn-taking approach is very close to the human one and it significantly improves the interaction cycle. (c) 2012 British Informatics Society Limited. The development of this approach and its construction as part of the Natural Interaction System LaBDA-Interactor has been par-tially supported by MA2VICMR (Regional Government of Madrid, S2009/TIC-1542), SemAnts (Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, AVANZA I+D TSI-020110-2009-419); THUBAN (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, TIN2008-02711); and ‘Access Channel to Digital Resources and Contents’ (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, TSI-020501-2008-54). Publicado

This paper presents computer graphics. Computer graphics and visualization are essentially about producing images for a target audience, be it the millions watching a new CG-animated movie or the small group of researchers trying to gain insight into the large amount of numerical data resulting from a scientific experiment. To ascertain the final images' effectiveness for their intended audience or the designed visualizations' accuracy and expressiveness, formal user studies are often essential. In human-computer interaction (HCI), such user studies play a similar fundamental role in evaluating the usability and applicability of interaction methods and metaphors for the various devices and software systems we use.

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10209-011-0245-9, This work presents a hybrid approach to sign language synthesis. This approach allows the hand-tuning of the phonetic description of the signs, which focuses on the time aspect of the sign. Therefore, the approach retains the capacity for the performing of morpho-phonological operations, like notation-based approaches, and improves the synthetic signing performance, such as the hand-tuned animations approach. The proposed approach simplifies the input message description using a new high-level notation and storage of sign phonetic descriptions in a relational database. Such relational database allows for more flexible sign phonetic descriptions; it also allows for a description of sign timing and the synchronization between sign phonemes. The new notation, named HLSML, is a gloss-based notation focusing on message description in it. HLSML introduces several tags that allow for the modification of the signs in the message that defines dialect and mood variations, both of which are defined in the relational database, and message timing, including transition durations and pauses. A new avatar design is also proposed that simplifies the development of the synthesizer and avoids any interference with the independence of the sign language phonemes during animation. The obtained results showed an increase of the sign recognition rate compared to other approaches. This improvement was based on the active role that the sign language experts had in the description of signs, which was the result of the flexibility of the sign storage approach. The approach will simplify the description of synthesizable signed messages, thus facilitating the creation of multimedia-signed contents.

In computer-mediated communication, participants often experience a loss of information that would have been conveyed by non- verbal means in a face-to-face communication. They need to compensate for this loss by being more verbose which may have a negative impact on the efficiency of communication or give rise to misunderstandings. In this paper, we present a computer system that augments the imagery perceived from the remote site with additional visual information and that can be controlled by using a Nintendo Wiimote game controller. Our prototype illustrates our approach how a system might be able to partially compensate for the information typically lost in conventional video conferencing where deictic gestures cannot be relayed properly to the remote site. Concerning user acceptance, our user tests also show that the visualization technique is crucial which is used for highlighting the objects or persons that are being pointed at. Adequate visualization techniques based on non-photorealistic rendering are proposed.

Human-computer interaction could play an essential role in learning. In distance learning, interactive tools can facilitate the learning process for teachers and students. In this article, the design and implementation of software will be introduced which helps users to learn more with the help of interactive instructions and concept map (Cmap) generation. Cmaps are graphical visualisations of knowledge about a topic, in which the concepts of a subject are meaningfully related to each other. Cmaps are widely used in E-learning and proved to be helpful to learners and informative to teachers. The step-by-step process of making a Cmap by means of specific tools with specific interfaces will result in a better learning process. Therefore, with this tool, a learner can make Cmaps stage by stage with necessary textual or graphical instructions. Other interactive features such as colours and message boxes are utilised to instruct, assure or warn the user when making a Cmap. Some other attributes of the tool help teachers receive a report about studentsˆˆe2ˆˆ80ˆˆ99 frequent mistakes in order to understand which part of the course should be developed.

This paper presents an eye gaze controlled projected display that can be used in aviation and automotive environment as a head up display. We have presented details of the hardware and software used in developing the display and an algorithm to improve performance of point and selection tasks in eye gaze controlled graphical user interface. The algorithm does not require changing layout of an interface; it rather puts a set of hotspots on clickable targets using a Simulated Annealing algorithm. Four user studies involving driving and flight simulators have found that the proposed projected display can improve driving and flying performance and significantly reduce pointing and selection times for secondary mission control tasks compared to existing interaction systems.

Linking things in the physical world with related digital resources and content in the virtual world is one of the visions of ubiquitous computing. Radio frequency identification tags, more specifically NFC tags, attached to the things and places in the physical world and using personal mobile devices equipped with readers to access the services and information associated to the tags, is studied in this paper. Eight trials representing different applications are described and the results of user experiments are reported. The main design findings are as follows: the standard size of the tag may be too limiting, we should allow tags of different visual appearance, form and size; the spatial positioning of tags in the physical interaction space gives a designer a lot of freedom but may also pose the risk of inconsistent and haphazard designs; complexity of the interaction task may be divided between using menus and keys of the personal device or using multiple tags; consistent and prompt feedback is important, feedback should use suitable modalities, including haptic feedback; the service or information provided should ex-ploit location information, i.e. the place of the specific tag, and finally fallback plans for unoperational or broken tags should exist.

Immersive software tools are virtual environments designed to give their users an augmented view of real-world data and ways of manipulating that data. As virtual environments, every action users make while interacting with these tools can be carefully logged, as can the state of the software and the information it presents to the user, giving these actions context. This data provides a high-resolution lens through which dynamic cognitive and behavioral processes can be viewed. In this report, we describe new methods for the analysis and interpretation of such data, utilizing a novel implementation of the Beta Process Hidden Markov Model (BP-HMM) for analysis of software activity logs. We further report the results of a preliminary study designed to establish the validity of our modeling approach. A group of 20 participants were asked to play a simple computer game, instrumented to log every interaction with the interface. Participants had no previous experience with the game’s functionality or rules, so the activity logs collected during their naïve interactions capture patterns of exploratory behavior and skill acquisition as they attempted to learn the rules of the game. Pre- and post-task questionnaires probed for self-reported styles of problem solving, as well as task engagement, difficulty, and workload. We jointly modeled the activity log sequences collected from all participants using the BP-HMM approach, identifying a global library of activity patterns representative of the collective behavior of all the participants. Analyses show systematic relationships between both pre- and post-task questionnaires, self-reported approaches to analytic problem solving, and metrics extracted from the BP-HMM decomposition. Overall, we find that this novel approach to decomposing unstructured behavioral data within software environments provides a sensible means for understanding how users learn to integrate software functionality for strategic task pursuit.

In this paper, we present disruption of household routines as a method to study home technology usage. Using three case studies as guidance, we show how disrupting household practices-either through changing the technology, task or division of labor-can provide valuable insight into current and future technology usage, and can guide the design of future technologies. Based on our case studies, we outline best practices and challenges with respect to the pragmatics of disruptive research methods. QC 20190926. QC 20200701

This paper presents a method and results of an ethnographic study aimed at building an understanding of Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) adoption in Mumbai, India. The study combined field observations and semi-structured interviews (N=43) of early ATM adopters, bank customers who do not use ATMs, and people who used the ATM for the first time as part of our research. Data were analysed to identify specific cultural traits that may affect the adoption of ATMs in urban India. Results demonstrated the unique role of the cultural context in affecting users' expectations and behavioural possibilities, thus determining people's response to the machine. This led to the conclusion that an understanding of cultural biases and metaphors can facilitate technology diffusion and acceptance informing design localisation and supporting the development of strategies to motivate and train users., © Elsevier

Normal communication of deaf people in ordinary life still remains an unrealized task, despite the fact that Sign Language Recognition (SLR) made a big improvement in recent years. We want here to address this problem proposing a portable and low cost system, which demonstrated to be effective for translating gestures into written or spoken sentences. This system relies on a home-made sensory glove, used to measure the hand gestures, and on Wavelet Analysis (WA) and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) to classify the hand's movements. In particular we devoted our efforts to translating the Italian Sign Language (LIS, Linguaggio Italiano dei Segni), applying WA for feature extractions and SVM for the classification of one hundred different dynamic gestures. The proposed system is light, not intrusive or obtrusive, to be easily utilized by deaf people in everyday life, and it has demonstrated valid results in terms of signs/words conversion.

Objective. While brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) for communication have reached considerable technical maturity, there is still a great need for state-of-the-art evaluation by the end-users outside laboratory environments. To achieve this primary objective, it is necessary to augment a BCI with a series of components that allow end-users to type text effectively. Approach. This work presents the clinical evaluation of a motor imagery (MI) BCI text-speller, called BrainTree, by six severely disabled end-users and ten able-bodied users. Additionally, we define a generic model of code-based BCI applications, which serves as an analytical tool for evaluation and design. Main results. We show that all users achieved remarkable usability and efficiency outcomes in spelling. Furthermore, our model-based analysis highlights the added value of human–computer interaction techniques and hybrid BCI error-handling mechanisms, and reveals the effects of BCI performances on usability and efficiency in code-based applications. Significance. This study demonstrates the usability potential of code-based MI spellers, with BrainTree being the first to be evaluated by a substantial number of end-users, establishing them as a viable, competitive alternative to other popular BCI spellers. Another major outcome of our model-based analysis is the derivation of a 80% minimum command accuracy requirement for successful code-based application control, revising upwards previous estimates attempted in the literature.

Quantifying and measuring Quality of Experience (QoE) are important and difficult concerns in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Quality of Service (QoS) and the actual User Interface (UI) of the application are both important contributors to the QoE of a user. This paper describes a framework that measures accurately the way a user uses the UI in order to model users' behaviors and profiles. It monitors the use of the mouse and use of UI elements with accurate time measurement. It does this in real-time and does so unobtrusively and efficiently allowing the user to work as normal with the application. This real-time accurate measurement of the user's interaction provides an important element of the analysis of the user's QoE.