Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Accessibility in human-centered computing'

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Presents the results of a joint National Science Foundation and European Commission Workshop, set up to identify directions for the future of human-centered computing, online communities and virtual environments. Discusses ways to meet the ultimate goal of facilitating human-computer interaction centered around human needs and capabilities.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-165).
As intelligent environments (IEs) move from simple kiosks and meeting rooms into the everyday offices, kitchens, and living spaces we use, the need for these spaces to communicate not only with users, but also with each other, will become increasingly important. Users will want to be able to shift their work environment between localities easily, and will also need to communicate with others as they move about. These IEs will thus require two pieces of infrastructure: a knowledge representation (KR) which can keep track of people and their relationships to the world; and a communication mechanism so that the IE can mediate interactions. This thesis seeks to define, explore and evaluate one way of creating this infrastructure, by creating societies of agents that can act on behalf of real-world entities such as users, physical spaces, or informal groups of people. Just as users interact with each other and with objects in their physical location, the agent societies interact with each other along communication channels organized along these same relationships. By organizing the infrastructure through analogies to the real world, we hope to achieve a simpler conceptual model for the users, as well as a communication hierarchy which can be realized efficiently.
by Stephen L. Peters.
Ph.D.

In order to support people's everyday health and wellness goals, health practitioners and organizations are embracing a more holistic approach to medicine---supporting patients both as individuals and members of their families and communities, and meeting people where they are: at home, work, and school. This 'everyday' approach to health has been enabled by new technologies, both dedicated-devices and services designed specifically for health sensing and feedback -- and multipurpose --such as smartphones and broadband-connected computers. Our physical relationship with computing has also become more intimate, and personal health devices can now track and report an unprecedented amount of information about our bodies, following their users around to an extent no doctor, coach or dietitian ever could. But we still have much to learn about how pervasive health devices can actually help promote the adoption of new health practices in daily life. Once they're `in the wild,' such devices interact with their users, but also the physical, social and political worlds in which those users live. These external factors---such as the walkablity of a person's neighborhood or the social acceptability of exercise and fitness activities---play a significant role in people's ability to change their health behaviors and sustain that change. Specifically, social theories of behavior change suggest that peer support may be critical in changing health attitudes and behaviors. These theories---Social Support Theory, Social Cognitive Theory and Social Comparison Theory among them---offer both larger frameworks for understanding the social influences of health behavior change and specific mechanisms by which that behavior change could be supported through interpersonal interaction. However, we are only beginning to understand the role that pervasive health technologies can play in supporting and mediating social interaction to motivate people's exploration and adoption of healthy behaviors. In this dissertation I seek to better understand how social computing technologies can help people help each other live healthier lives. I ground my research in a participant-led investigation of a specific population and condition: adolescents and obesity prevention. I want to understand how social behavior change theories from psychology and sociology apply to pervasive social health technology. Which mechanisms work and why? How does introducing a pervasive social health system into a community affect individuals' behaviors and attitudes towards their health? Finally, I want to contribute back to those theories, testing their effectiveness in novel technologically mediated situations. Adolescent obesity is a particularly salient domain in which to study these issues. In the last 30 years, adolescent obesity rates in the US alone have tripled, and although they have leveled off in recent years they remain elevated compared to historical norms. Habits formed during adolescence can have lifelong effects, and health promotion research shows that even the simple act of walking more each day has lasting benefits. Everyday health and fitness research in HCI has generally focused on social comparison and "gamified" competition. This is especially true in studies focused on adolescents and teens. However, both theory from social psychology and evidence from the health promotion community suggest that these direct egocentric models of behavior change may be limited in scope: they may only work for certain kinds of people, and their effects may be short-lived once the competitive framework is removed. I see an opportunity for a different approach: social tools for everyday adolescent health. These systems, embedded in existing school and community practices, can leverage scalable, non-competitive social interaction to catalyze positive perceptions of physical activity and social support for fitness, while remaining grounded in the local environment. Over the last several years I have completed a series of field engagements with middle school students in the Atlanta area. I have focused on students in a majority-minority low-income community in the Atlanta metropolitan area facing above-average adult obesity levels, and I have involved the students as informants throughout the design process. In this dissertation, I report findings based on a series of participatory design-based formative explorations; the iterative design of a pedometer-based pervasive health system to test these theories in practice; and the deployment of this system---StepStream---in three configurations: a prototype deployment, a `self-tracking' deployment, and a `social' deployment. In this dissertation, I test the following thesis: A school-based social fitness approach to everyday adolescent health can positively influence offline health behaviors in real-world settings. Furthermore, a noncompetitive social fitness system can perform comparably in attitude and behavior change to more competitive or direct-comparison systems, especially for those most in need of behavior change}. I make the following contributions: (1) The identification of tensions and priorities for the design of everyday health systems for adolescents; (2) A design overview of StepStream, a social tool for everyday adolescent health; (3) A description of StepStream's deployment from a socio-technical perspective, describing the intervention as a school-based pervasive computing system; (4) An empirical study of a noncompetitive awareness system for physical activity; (5) A comparison of this system in two configurations in two different middle schools; (6) An analysis of observational learning and collective efficacy in a pervasive health system.

Studies assessing novice programming proficiency have often found that many students coming out of introductory-level programming courses still struggle with programming. To address this, some researchers have attempted to find and develop ways to better help students succeed in learning to program. This dissertation research contributes to this area by studying the programming processes of students trained through a specific program design curriculum, How to Design Programs (HTDP). HTDP is an introductory-level curriculum for teaching program design that teaches a unique systematic process called the design recipe that leverages the structure of input data to design programs. The design recipe explicitly scaffolds learners through the program design process by asking students to produce intermediate artifacts that represent a given problem in different ways up to a program solution to the problem. Although HTDP is used in several higher-education institutions and some K-12 programs, how HTDP-trained students design programs towards problems, particularly ones with multiple task-components, has not been thoroughly studied. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to gain an understanding and insight into how students use the techniques put forth by the design recipe towards designing solutions for programming problems. I conducted a series of exploratory user studies with HTDP-trained student cohorts from HTDP course instances across two different universities to collect and analyze students’ programming process data in situ. I synthesized findings from each study towards an overall conceptual framework, which serves as a data-grounded theory that captures several facets of HTDP-trained students’ program design process. The main contribution of this work is this theory, which describes: (1) the program design-related skills that students used and the levels of complexity at which they applied these skills, (2) how students’ use of design skills evolve during a course, (3) the interactions between program design skills and course contexts that influenced how students applied their skills, and (4) the programming process patterns by which students approached the programming problems we gave and how these approaches relate towards students’ success with the problems. Using insights from the theory, I describe recommendations toward pedagogical practices for teaching HTDP-based courses, as well as broader reflections towards teaching introductory CS.

Thesis (M. S.)--Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009.
Committee Chair: Elizabeth D. Mynatt; Committee Member: Abowd, Gregory; Committee Member: Bruckman, Amy; Committee Member: Dourish, Paul; Committee Member: Nersessian, Nancy.

Computer Science is a complex field, and even experts do not always agree how the field should be defined. Though a moderate amount is known about how precollege students think about the field of CS, less is known about how CS majors' conceptions of the field develop during the undergraduate curriculum. Given the difficulty of understanding CS, how do students make educational decisions like what electives or specializations to pursue? This work presents a theory of student conceptions of CS, based on 37 interviews with students and student advisers and analyzed with a grounded theory approach. Students tend to have one of three main views about CS: CS as an academic discipline focused on the mathematical study of algorithms, CS as mostly about programming but also incorporating supporting subfields, and CS as a broad discipline with many different (programming and non-programming) subfields. I have also developed and piloted a survey instrument to determine how prevalent each kind of conception is in the undergraduate population. I also present a theory of student educational decisions in CS. Students do not usually have specific educational goals in CS and instead take an exploratory approach to their classes. Particularly enjoyable or unenjoyable classes cause them to narrow their educational focus. As a result, students do not reason very deeply about the CS content of their classes when they make educational decisions. This work makes three main contributions: the theory of student conceptions, the theory of student educational decisions, and the preliminary survey instrument for evaluating student conceptions. This work has applications in CS curriculum design as well as for future research in the CS education community.

Social accounts of technological change make the flexibility and openness of interpretations the starting point of an argument against technological determinism. They suggest that technological change unfolds in the semantic domain, but they focus on the social processes around the interpretations of new technologies, and do not address the conceptual processes of change in interpretations. The dissertation presents an empirically grounded case study of the design process of an open-source online software platform based on the framework of distributed cognition to argue that the cognitive perspective is needed for understanding innovation in software, because it allows us to describe the reflexive and expansive contribution of conceptual processes to new software and the significance of professional epistemic practices in framing the direction of innovation. The framework of distributed cognition brings the social and cognitive perspectives together on account of its understanding of conceptual processes as distributed over time, among people, and between humans and artifacts. The dissertation argues that an evolving open-source software landscape became translated into the open-ended local design space of a new software project in a process of infrastructural implosion, and the design space prompted participants to outline and pursue epistemic strategies of sense-making and learning about the contexts of use. The result was a process of conceptual modeling, which resulted in a conceptually novel user interface. Prototyping professional practices of user-centered design lent directionality to this conceptual process in terms of a focus on individual activities with the user interface. Social approaches to software design under the broad umbrella of human-centered computing have been seeking to inform the design on the basis of empirical contributions about a social context. The analysis has shown that empirical engagement with the contexts of use followed from conceptual modeling, and concern about real world contexts was aligned with the user-centered direction that design was taking. I also point out a social-technical gap in the design process in connection with the repeated performance challenges that the platform was facing, and describe the possibility of a social-technical imagination.

The practice of health self-management offers behavioral and problem-solving strategies that can effectively promote responsibility for one's own wellbeing, improve one's health outcomes, and decrease the cost of health services. Personal informatics applications support health self-management by allowing their users to easily track personal health information, and to review the changes and patterns in this information. Over the course of the past several years, I have pursued a research agenda centered on understanding how personal health informatics applications can further support the strategies of health self-management--specifically those relating to goal-management and behavior change. I began by developing a flexible personal informatics tool, called Salud!, that I could use to observe real-world goal management and behavior change strategies, as well as use to evaluate new interfaces designed to assist in goal management. Unlike existing personal informatics tools, Salud! allows users to self-define the information that they will track, which allows tracking of highly personal and meaningful data that may not be possible to track given other tools. It also enables users to share their account data with facilitators (e.g. fitness grainers, nutritionists, etc.) who can provide input and feedback. Salud! was built on top of an infrastructure consisting of a stack of modular services that make it easier for others to develop and/or evaluate a variety of personal informatics applications. Several research teams used this infrastructure to develop and deploy a variety of custom projects. Informal analysis of their efforts showed an unmet need for data storage and visualization services for home- and health-based sensor data. In order to design a goal management support tool for Salud!, I first, I conducted a meta-analysis of relevant research literature to cull a set of proven goal management strategies. The key outcome of this work was an operationalization of Action Plans--goal management strategies that are effective at supporting behavior change. I then deployed Salud! in two fitness-related contexts to observe and understand the breadth of health-related behavior change and goal management practices. Findings from these deployments showed that personal informatics tools are most helpful to individuals who are able to articulate short-term, actionable goals, and who are able to integrate self-tracking into their daily activities. The literature meta-analysis and the two Salud! deployments provided formative requirements for a goal management interaction that would both incorporate effective goal management strategies and support the breadth of real-world goals. I developed a model of the goal management process as the framework for such an interaction. This model enables goals to be represented, evaluated, and visualized, based on a wide range of user objectives and data collection strategies. Using this model, I was able to develop a set of interactions that allow users of Salud! to manage their personal goals within the application. The generalized goal management model shows the inherent difficulty in supporting open-ended, highly personalized goal management. To function generically, Salud! requires facilitator input to correctly process goals and meaningfully classify their attributes. However, for specific goals represented by specific data collection strategies, it is possible to fully- or semi-automate the goal management process. I ran a large-scale evaluation of Salud! with the goal management interaction to evaluate the effectiveness of a fully-automated goal management interaction. The evaluation consisted of a common health self-management intervention: a simple fitness program to increase participants' daily step count. The results of this evaluation suggest that the goal management interaction may improve the rate of goal realization among users who are initially less active and less confident in their ability to succeed. Additionally, this evaluation showed that, while it can significantly increase participants' step count, a fully automated fitness program is not as effective as traditional, instructor-led fitness programs. However, it is much easier to administer and much less resource intensive, showing that it can be utilized to rapidly evaluate concrete goal management strategies.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008.
Committee Chair: Mynatt, Elizabeth D.; Committee Member: Abowd, Gregory D.; Committee Member: Edwards, W. Keith; Committee Member: MacIntyre, Blair; Committee Member: Moran, Thomas P.

Due to the fastest growing senior population, age-related cognitive impairments, including Alzheimer's disease, are becoming among the most common diseases in the United States. Currently, prevention through delay is considered the best way to tackle Alzheimer's disease and related dementia, as there is no known cure for those diseases. Early detection is crucial, in that screening individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment may delay its onset and progression. For my dissertation work, I investigate how computing technologies can help medical practitioners detect and monitor cognitive impairment due to dementia, and I develop a computerized sketch-based screening tool. In this dissertation, I present the design, implementation, and evaluation of the ClockMe System, a computerized Clock Drawing Test. The traditional Clock Drawing Test (CDT) is a rapid and reliable instrument for the early detection of cognitive dysfunction. Neurologists often notice missing or extra numbers in the clock drawings of people with cognitive impairments and use scoring criteria to make a diagnosis and treatment plan. The ClockMe System includes two different applications - (1) the ClockReader for the patients who take the Clock Drawing Test and (2) the ClockAnalyzer for clinicians who use the CDT results to make a diagnosis or to monitor patients. The contributions of this research are (1) the creation of a computerized screening tool to help clinicians identify cognitive impairment through a more accessible and quick-and-easy screening process; (2) the delivery of computer-collected novel behavioral data, which may offer new insights and a new understanding of a patient's cognition; (3) an in-depth understanding of different stakeholders and the identification of their common user needs and desires within a complicated healthcare workflow system; and (4) the triangulation of multiple data collection methods such as ethnographical observations, interviews, focus group meetings, and quantitative data from a user survey in a real-world deployment study.

To date, hundreds of millions of mini-QWERTY keyboard equipped devices (miniaturized versions of a full desktop keyboard) have been sold. Accordingly, a large percentage of text messages originate from fixed-key, mini-QWERTY keyboard enabled mobile phones. Over a series of three longitudinal studies I quantify how quickly and accurately individuals can input text on mini-QWERTY keyboards. I evaluate performance in ideal laboratory conditions as well as in a variety of mobile contexts. My first study establishes baseline performance measures; my second study investigates the impact of limited visibility on text input performance; and my third study investigates the impact of mobility (sitting, standing, and walking) on text input performance. After approximately five hours of practice, participants achieved expertise typing almost 60 words per minute at almost 95% accuracy. Upon completion of these studies, I examine the types of errors that people make when typing on mini-QWERTY keyboards. Having discovered a common pattern in errors, I develop and refine an algorithm to automatically detect and correct errors in mini-QWERTY keyboard enabled text input. I both validate the algorithm through the analysis of pre-recorded typing data and then empirically evaluate the impacts of automatic error correction on live mini-QWERTY keyboard text input. Validating the algorithm over various datasets, I demonstrate the potential to correct approximately 25% of the total errors and correct up to 3% of the total keystrokes. Evaluating automatic error detection and correction on live typing results in successfully correcting 61% of the targeted errors committed by participants while increasing typing rates by almost two words per minute without introducing noticeable distraction.

In recent years, the edges between reality and virtual reality have been further smudged as today’s software and hardware allows for wireless immersive experiences. In an attempt to solve locomotion as the last piece of the puzzle of perfecting immersive virtual realities, impossible spaces have been developed to support natural locomotion. This in-between subject study investigated the effects of the combination of climbing and free walking on immersion in an impossible space environment with 20 participants. Users tended to greatly underestimate the distance climbed (which contradicts a previous study), concentrate, lose track of time, describe their experience more positively and differently than the controls group. Signs of spatial, emotional, cognitive and tactical immersion were shown in aspects of concentration, time, feelings of freedom, narrative, presence, safety, mental stimulation and locomotion user strategies to name a few. Minimal cues may have been present while future studies might fully confirm and define the immersive potential of vertical locomotion in impossible spaces.
De senaste årens utveckling har fortsatt sudda ut kanterna mellan verklighet och virtuell verklighet då dagens teknik stödjer trådlösa immersiva verkligheter. I ett försök att lösa locomotion som det sista biten av pusslet för att göra virtuella verkligheter perfekta har s.k impossible spaces utvecklats för att stödja naturlig locomotion. Den här A/B-gruppsstudien undersökte effekter på immersion med kombinationen av naturlig och vertikal locomotion i en impossibel space miljö med 20 deltagare. Användare tenderade att grovt underskatta längden de klättrade (vilket motsäger en tidigare studie), koncentrera sig, tappa tidsuppfattningen, beskriva deras upplevelsen mer positivt och annorlunda än kontrollgruppen. Tecken på rumslig, emotionell, kognitiv och taktil immersion visade sig i form av koncentration, tid, känslor av frihet, narrativ, närvaro, säkerhet, mental stimulation och locomotion- användarstrategier för att nämna några. Minimala element kan ha uppnåtts medan framtida studies kan bekräfta och definiera den immersiva potentialen med vertikal locomotion i impossibel spaces till fullo.

Pessoas com tetraplegia possuem controle sobre poucas partes do corpo, por isso têm grande dificuldade de interação com o mundo ao seu redor. Interfaces humano-computador que utilizam a capacidade de controle muscular remanescente podem promover um acréscimo importante na autonomia do usuário com tetraplegia. Uma nova forma de interação com o computador é proposta: controle de um dispositivo de entrada por meio do lábio inferior. A ideia não foi partir da tecnologia e agregar recursos, mas sim, partir da pessoa e entender suas necessidades e potencialidades para pesquisar, propor, desenvolver e avaliar alternativas tecnológicas. Com o intuito de investigar se o lábio inferior seria capaz de controlar uma interface de maneira eficiente e precisa, foram desenvolvidos protótipos de um dispositivo de entrada vestível que pudesse ser acionado pelo lábio. Considerando o estado da arte, foi avaliada a capacidade do lábio inferior controlar esta interface proposta como um mouse de computador. Também foi realizada a comparação do controle pelo lábio inferior e pelo polegar utilizando o mesmo dispositivo sob as mesmas condições. O objetivo foi estabelecer referências sobre a capacidade do lábio inferior de controlar uma interface. Foram realizados e analisados os resultados de testes com sujeitos de pesquisa, mensurando e comprovando a capacidade tanto do lábio inferior, como parte do corpo capaz de controlar um dispositivo de entrada, quanto do próprio dispositivo.
People with tetraplegia control few body parts; therefore, they have great difficulty to interact with the environment. Human-computer interfaces that explore the residual muscular control capacity can provide the user with tetraplegia with an important autonomy increase. I propose a new form of interaction, a input device controlled by the lower lip. The idea was not starting from the technology and aggregate resources, but starting from the user needs to research, to propose, to develop and to evaluate technological alternatives. In order to investigate the lower lip ability to efficiently and precisely control an input device, prototypes of a wearable device were developed. I presented an evaluation of the lower lip potential to control a pointing input device, according to the state of the art. The lower lip throughput was compared with the thumb throughput using the same input device under the same conditions. The objective was to establish the baseline for future researches about the lower lip capacity to operate a computer pointing device. The results proved and measured the capacity of the interface as well as the lower lip as a body part able to control a input device.

Orientador: Heloisa Vieira da Rocha
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-11T08:22:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Oliveira_Rodrigode_D.pdf: 16111521 bytes, checksum: 6c77c064d781230212b6c88feb0bcb6c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008
Resumo: Com a miniaturização dos componentes digitais e o vasto desenvolvimento tecnológico dos últimos anos, a sociedade tem presenciado a redefinição dos "computadores pessoais" pelo advento dos dispositivos móveis. Além da inovação, eles introduziram o desafio do design multi-dispositivo para as aplicações desktop. Enquanto algumas abordagens criaram interfaces móveis sem aproveitar qualquer modelo, outras buscaram adaptações automáticas visando reduzir a sobrecarga de designo Em ambas, o foco do design deixou de ser o usuário, tornando as interfaces tão diferentes ao ponto de comprometerem a usabilidade na realização de uma mesma tarefa em vários dispositivos. Esta tese afirma que não existe uma abordagem de design multi-dispositivo capaz de garantir boa usabilidade em todos os contextos porque o usuário pode escolher apenas uma forma de acesso à aplicação ou alternar seu uso por meio de vários dispositivos. No primeiro caso, o usuário aprende a usar a interface para realizar suas tarefas, sendo relevante uma abordagem que aproveite os recursos do dispositivo e trate suas limitações. No segundo, o usuário já conhece uma das interfaces, o que gera uma expectativa no uso das demais. Logo, é necessário combinar abordagens com objetivos diferentes para atender ao usuário de acordo com o seu contexto de uso. Neste sentido, propõe-se o design multi-dispositivo por meio da preservação de uma hierarquia de prioridades de consistência definida em três níveis. Enquanto os dois primeiros dão suporte à expectativa do usuário em contextos de uso alternado (propensos à execução de tarefas em dispositivos diferentes) e migração de tarefas (iniciando tarefas com um dispositivo e concluindo com outro), o terceiro nível garante a personalização das tarefas de maior interesse visando eficiência e satisfação de uso em um dispositivo específico. A avaliação desta metodologia foi feita por meio de um experimento com três interfaces de pocket PC construídas a partir de uma aplicação desktop do domínio de Educação a Distância: a primeira delas era uma réplica da original (Migração Direta), a segunda não mantinha consistência de layout e era baseada em um processo de design personalizado adequado ao dispositivo (Linear) e a terceira aplicava apenas os dois primeiros níveis da hierarquia de prioridades (Overview). Os resultados da avaliação subjetiva mostraram que a abordagem Overview foi capaz de manter o modelo mental do usuário com maior precisão por preservar os atributos de facilidade, eficiência e segurança de uso na interação inter-dispositivo. Além disso, os resultados medidos para a eficácia (exatidão das respostas) e eficiênciá (tempo médio de execução das tarefas) foram iguais ou melhores com essa abordagem. Por outro lado, os usuários revelaram uma preferência pela personalização de tarefas presente na abordagem Linear. Este resultado dá suporte à proposta desta tese, mostrando que a eficácia gerada pelos dois primeiros níveis da hierarquia de prioridades (percepção e execução das tarefas) deve ser combinada com o terceiro nível de personalização. Para isso, sugere-se a disponibilização de padrões de interface criados pelo designer para escolha do usuário durante a interação. Essa combinação deve garantir usabilidade no acesso a uma aplicação feito sempre por um mesmo dispositivo ou em contextos de uso alternado e migração de tarefas
Abstract: With the miniaturization of digital components and the vast technological development of the past years, society has remarked the redefinition of "personal computers" by the advent of modern mobile devices. Besides the innovation, these handhelds also introduced the challenge to develop multi-device interfaces for today's desktop applications. While some created mobile interfaces from scratch to get the best from the devices, others looked for automatic adaptations to reduce the load imposed to the designeI. In both cases, the user wasn't the focus anymore, which resulted interfaces so different from each other to the point of compromising usability when peHorming one task on many devices. This thesis claims that there is no multi-device approach capable to provi de full usability in every context because the user may choose only one interface to access the application or interchange its use via many devices. In the first case, the user learns to perform tasks with the given device, which makes relevant an approach that takes advantage of its resources and solves its limitations. In the second, the user already knows one of the available interfaces, which generates an expectation for the others. Therefore, it is necessary to combine approaches with different goals and suit the user according to the appropriate context. In this sense, we propose multi-device design via maintenance of a consistency priorities hierarchy defined in three levels. The first two levels give support to the user's expectation in contexts of interchange (prone to task execution with different devices) and task migration (starting tasks with one device and finishing with other). On the other side, the third level provides task personalization according to the user's interest towards higher efficiency and satisfaction of use with a specific device. The evaluation of this methodology was conducted by an experiment with three pocket PC interfaces designed from an e-learning desktop application: the first interface was an exact replica of the original desktop version (Direct Migration), the second didn't maintain layout consistency and was based in a personalized design process adequate to the device (Linear) while the third applied only the first two levels of the consistency priorities hierarchy (Overview). The subjective evaluation results pointed the Overview approach as the best to maintain the user's mental model by preserving easiness, efficiency and safety of use on inter-device interaction. Additionally, both measured efficacy (task result accuracy) and efficiency (task execution mean time) were the same or even better with this approach. On the other hand, users revealed their preference for the task personalization present in the Linear approach. This result gives support to our proposal, corroborating that the efficacy generated by the first two levels of the consistency priorities hierarchy (task perception and execution) should be combined with the third level of personalization. This could be done by letting designers create interface patterns and make them available to users during interaction. Such combination should guarantee usability while constantly accessing one application through the same device or in contexts of alternated use and task migration
Doutorado
Doutor em Ciência da Computação

I denna uppsats jämförs designförslag för visuell korrigerande feedback via projektor i hemmatränings miljö för att se vilken design och vilka design kombinationer som skulle vara användbart och tydligast att förstå för en användare. I och med covid 19 har det lett till att det är mer aktuellt att träna hemifrån istället för på gym för att minska smittrisken. Men i och med att det ofta inte finns samma stödjande verktyg hemma som på gym (ex. speglar och instruktörer) så kan det leda till att övningar utförs fel och kan leda till skador. Tidigt inne i utforskandet av digitala verktyg för hemmaträning kunde man se en kunskapslucka. Forskning och förslag finns runt området men få verktyg för just hemmaträning. Genom att använda tidigare forskning och tidigare kurslitteratur som bas till designförslagen så skapades det tre olika designförslag. De förslagen användes i kvalitativa intervjuer för att bedöma och kritisera de förslagen som presenterades. Efter intervjuerna evaluerades designförslagen för att landa i ett användbart och tydligt designförslag av visuell korrigerande feedback via projektor.
In this paper, design for visual corrective feedback through projection in at-home-exercising environments is compared to see what design and what design combinations would be usable and most understandable. With the Covid 19 pandemic it has become more actual to start exercising from home instead of going to gyms and increase the infection risk of the virus. However, with most homes not having all the helpful tools that the gyms might have (eg. mirrors and instructors), leads to practitioners not exercising the correct way which in turn might lead to the practitioners receiving injuries rather than the desired results. Early on in the research on digital tools for at home exercising, a knowledge gap came to view. Research and drafts do exist but solutions for at home exercising were rare to nonexistent. With the help of previous research and course literature as a base for design, three proposals were made. Those proposals were used in qualitative interviews to judge and critique the presented proposals. After the interviews, the presented design proposals were reevaluated to give a usable and understandable design proposal of visual corrective feedback through projection.

Annually, road accidents cause more than 1.2 million deaths, 50 million injuries, and US$ 518 billion of economic cost globally. About 90% of the accidents occur due to human errors such as bad awareness, distraction, drowsiness, low training, fatigue etc. These human errors can be minimized by using advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) which actively monitors the driving environment and alerts a driver to the forthcoming danger, for example adaptive cruise control, blind spot detection, parking assistance, forward collision warning, lane departure warning, driver drowsiness detection, and traffic sign recognition etc. Unfortunately, these systems are provided only with modern luxury cars because they are very expensive due to numerous sensors employed. Therefore, camera-based ADAS are being seen as an alternative because a camera has much lower cost, higher availability, can be used for multiple applications and ability to integrate with other systems. Aiming at developing a camera-based ADAS, we have performed an ethnographic study of drivers in order to find what information about the surroundings could be helpful for drivers to avoid accidents. Our study shows that information on speed, distance, relative position, direction, and size & type of the nearby vehicles & other objects would be useful for drivers, and sufficient for implementing most of the ADAS functions. After considering available technologies such as radar, sonar, lidar, GPS, and video-based analysis, we conclude that video-based analysis is the fittest technology that provides all the essential support required for implementing ADAS functions at very low cost. Finally, we have proposed a Smart-Dashboard system that puts technologies – such as camera, digital image processor, and thin display – into a smart system to offer all advanced driver assistance functions. A basic prototype, demonstrating three functions only, is implemented in order to show that a full-fledged camera-based ADAS can be implemented using MATLAB.
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La accesibilidad a la bilbiografía de áreas técnicas como la matemática es un tema importante para que la educación sea cada vez más inclusiva. Aún así, como lo es de importante puede que lo sea de complejo. Uno de los mayores problemas de acceso a la matemática se da en la comunidad de estudiantes y científicos ciegos o disminuidos visuales. El problema es que las expresiones matemáticas poseen un componente fuertemente visual que se vuelve completamente inaccesible para una persona ciega al momento de su la lectura. Los sujetos afectados por este problema han encontrado una solución parcial a la accesibilidad de bibliografía técnica que consiste en utilizar un lector de pantalla para leer (en forma literal) en voz alta toda cadena de caracteres presente, incluyendo el texto en documentos LATEX. El inconveniente es que las expresiones matemáticas escritas en LATEX son leídas literalmente también, resultando en enunciados difíciles de comprender para el sujeto que lo esté escuchando. Este trabajo busca mejorar la accesibilidad de la matemática desarrollando una aplicación que, en un paso previo a la acción del lector de pantalla, las describa en lenguaje natural para que luego sean leídas naturalmente.

No
This report summarizes results of the first EC/NSF joint Advanced Research Workshop, which identified key research challenges and opportunities in information technology. The group agreed that the first joint research workshop should concentrate on the themes of human-centered computing and VEs. Human-centered computing is perceived as an area of strategic importance because of the move towards greater decentralization and decomposition in the location and provision of computation. The area of VEs is one where increased collaboration should speed progress in solving some of the more intractable problems in building effective applications

Tese de doutoramento em Tecnologias e Sistemas de Informação (ramo de conhecimento em Sistemas de Computação e Comunicações)
A major challenge to ubiquitous computing system designers is the provision of walk-up-and-use solutions for supporting activities performed by occasional visitors to a particular place. When arriving for the first time to a particular place, occasional visitors have little or no idea about what the local environment is providing to support their activity. Furthermore, this support has to be self-explainable and quickly learnable, as occasional visitors are not prepared to interact with an unknown system and do not have time to spend understanding and learning how to use new tools. Ubiquitous computing environments promise to transparently support people in their daily activities by leveraging computing resources existent in the physical environment. Ubiquitous computing can greatly enhance the experience of occasional visitors to public spaces, by offering effective and transparent means for achieving their activities. Moreover, ubiquitous computing interaction artefacts are becoming increasingly cheap, thus allowing for widespread availability throughout public spaces. However, there is still much to do to achieve the vision of a computing system that requires little or no attention at all, so that humans can use the computer unconsciously. Ideally, people should perform an activity requiring computing tools as they perform any other activity, by focusing on the activity itself, and using the computing tool as naturally as other tools. There is thus the need to center the design and development of ubiquitous systems in the human activity, in order to bring computing closer to people and to transparently support activities that take place in the physical world. This work thus follows an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing and contributes with ActivitySpot, an activity-centered conceptual and software framework targeted at providing ubiquitous computing support for occasional visitors to public spaces. The conceptual framework aims at modelling human activity and user interaction with the ubiquitous computing system. Undertaking an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing system design requires an understanding of how humans think about and carry out their activities. Therefore, this research is grounded on previous work on human activity analysis, namely Activity Theory, a conceptual framework for analyzing human activity developed during the twentieth century. The software framework includes a ubiquitous computing infrastructure for providing the actual support to occasional visitors, tools for deploying ubiquitous computing solutions by non-computer-expert public space administrators, and a software library for developing the support to new activities. Both the conceptual and software framework have been evaluated by a series of end-user studies which showed that ActivitySpot is effective for walk-up-and-use systems, making user interaction with a ubiquitous computing system almost as natural as interacting with other everyday tools. The majority of users clearly reported that ActivitySpot fostered learnability and usability. The choice of using elementary, everyday interaction means with a simple stimulus-response interaction model was also fundamental in the success with end-users. Moreover, the ActivitySpot software framework enables rapid development of the support for new activities and actions, by means of a software library for developers, as well as it eases the deployment and configuration of that support, by means of a graphical user interface authoring tool for public space managers.
Um dos maiores desafios para quem desenha sistemas de computação ubíqua é o fornecimento de soluções que favoreçam a interacção espontânea, sem treino prévio, sobretudo as destinadas a suportar actividades realizadas por visitantes ocasionais de um determinado lugar. Quando chegam pela primeira vez a um determinado lugar, os visitantes sabem pouco ou nada sobre o que é disponibilizado para facilitar a sua visita. Além disso, o suporte fornecido tem de ter características que permitam uma aprendizagem rápida da sua utilização, visto que os visitantes ocasionais não estão preparados para interagir com um sistema desconhecido e não têm tempo para aprender a usar novas ferramentas. A computação ubíqua promete ajudar, de modo transparente, as pessoas nas suas actividades diárias, tirando partido dos recursos de computação existentes no ambiente físico. A computação ubíqua pode deveras melhorar a experiência dos visitantes ocasionais de espaços públicos, oferecendo-lhes meios transparentes e eficazes para levarem a cabo as suas actividades. Além disso, os artefactos de computação ubíqua estão a tornar-se cada vez mais acessíveis, havendo pois condições para uma disponibilidade alargada na generalidade dos espaços públicos. No entanto, há ainda muito a fazer para concretizar a visão de um sistema de computação que requeira pouca ou nenhuma atenção por parte dos utilizadores. Idealmente, as pessoas deveriam executar uma actividade que requeira ferramentas de computação com a mesma facilidade com que executam outras actividades, focando-se na própria actividade e utilizando as ferramentas de computação tão naturalmente como utilizam outras ferramentas. Há pois a necessidade de centrar o desenho e o desenvolvimento de sistemas ubíquos na actividade humana, de modo a aproximar a computação das pessoas e a suportar de maneira transparente as actividades que têm lugar no mundo físico. Este trabalho segue, portanto, uma abordagem centrada na actividade e contribui com o ActivitySpot, uma plataforma conceptual e de software, centrada na actividade, destinada a fornecer suporte de computação ubíqua para visitantes ocasionais de espaços públicos. A plataforma conceptual pretende modelar a actividade humana e a interacção com o sistema de computação ubíqua. A opção pela abordagem centrada na actividade requer o entendimento sobre como os humanos pensam e executam as suas actividades. É, pois, por isso que esta investigação é baseada em trabalho prévio na área de análise de actividades humanas, nomeadamente na Teoria da Actividade, um modelo conceptual de análise da actividade humana, desenvolvido durante o século XX. A plataforma de software inclui uma infra-estrutura de computação ubíqua destinada a suportar as actividades de visitantes ocasionais, ferramentas para a instalação de soluções de computação ubíqua por parte de administradores de espaços públicos que não dominem necessariamente ferramentas computacionais, e uma biblioteca de software para o desenvolvimento do suporte a novas actividades. Ambas as plataformas foram avaliadas por uma série de estudos com utilizadores. Estes estudos demonstraram que o ActivitySpot é eficaz em situações de utilização espontânea de sistemas que não tenham sido objecto de treino prévio, tornando a interacção com um sistema de computação ubíqua tão natural como a interacção com outras ferramentas do dia-a-dia. A maioria dos utilizadores relatou claramente que o ActivitySpot fomentou a fácil aprendizagem e utilização. A opção pela utilização de meios de interacção elementares e de uso diário e de um modelo de interacção simples, baseado no conceito de estímulo-resposta, foi igualmente fundamental no sucesso obtido com a utilização do sistema. Além disso, verificou-se que a plataforma ActivitySpot permite o rápido desenvolvimento de suporte a novas actividades e acções, através da biblioteca de software, assim como facilita a instalação e configuração do suporte às actividades, por meio de uma ferramenta gráfica de edição destinada a gestores de espaços públicos.
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
The rapid infusion of artificial intelligence into everyday technologies means that consumers are likely to interact with intelligent systems that provide suggestions and recommendations on a daily basis in the very near future. While these technologies promise much, current issues in low transparency create high potential to confuse end-users, limiting the market viability of these technologies. While efforts are underway to make machine learning models more transparent, HCI currently lacks an understanding of how these model-generated explanations should best translate into the practicalities of system design. To address this gap, my research took a pragmatic approach to improving system transparency for end-users. Through a series of three studies, I investigated the need and value of transparency to end-users, and explored methods to improve system designs to accomplish greater transparency in intelligent systems offering recommendations. My research resulted in a summarized taxonomy that outlines a variety of motivations for why users ask questions of intelligent systems; useful for considering the type and category of information users might appreciate when interacting with AI-based recommendations. I also developed a categorization of explanation types, known as explanation vectors, that is organized into groups that correspond to user knowledge goals. Explanation vectors provide system designers options for delivering explanations of system processes beyond those of basic explainability. I developed a detailed user typology, which is a four-factor categorization of the predominant attitudes and opinion schemes of everyday users interacting with AI-based recommendations; useful to understand the range of user sentiment towards AI-based recommender features, and possibly useful for tailoring interface design by user type. Lastly, I developed and tested an evaluation method known as the System Transparency Evaluation Method (STEv), which allows for real-world systems and prototypes to be evaluated and improved through a low-cost query method. Results from this dissertation offer concrete direction to interaction designers as to how these results might manifest in the design of interfaces that are more transparent to end users. These studies provide a framework and methodology that is complementary to existing HCI evaluation methods, and lay the groundwork upon which other research into improving system transparency might build.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc
Technology plays a big role in our lives. However, many do not have access to technology and the knowledge it provides, giving rise to the so-called digital divide. The purpose of this study is to explore and understand the impact of digital storytelling for social innovation, considering the digital landscape of South Africa. For example, it is important to consider what types of technologies have worked and are still working to capture stories. Furthermore, to consider what skills the end-users would require to use the system and what devices would be best suited for them—PC, laptop, tablet, or smartphone—and what software would be required to capture their stories. Finally, access to Wi-Fi or the Internet would need to be economically viable. Despite the vast research that has been done on digital storytelling, not much has been done in terms of its impact on social innovation and how a digital platform should be designed to enrich social innovation and creativity.

Tesis (Lic. en Ciencias de la Computación)--Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación, 2016.
Gracias al gran avance de la tecnología móvil en la actualidad, se ha dispuesto como propósito del presente trabajo crear una aplicación basada en la plataforma Android para teléfonos inteligentes. La aplicación actuará como cliente de servidores geográficos y consultará los datos requeridos, que luego serán expuestos a los encargados del manejo del fuego a través de una interfaz de mapas, brindando la información necesaria para llevar adelante cálculos y control respecto a diferentes variables en el momento de una crisis.
Thanks to the breakthrough of mobile technology today, the purpose of this work has been to create an application based on the Android platform for smartphones. The application will act as a client of geographical servers and will consult the required data, which will then be exposed to those responsible for fire management through a map interface, providing the necessary information to carry out calculations and control with respect to different variables at the time of a crisis.

Tesis (Lic. en Ciencias de la Computación)--Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación, 2016.
Los sistemas de análisis de sentimientos y la minería de opiniones han resultado ser de gran utilidad en los últimos años, con la introducción de las redes sociales. Su principal objetivo es identificar opiniones positivas o negativas en textos generados por usuarios y sobre qué entidad o aspecto de la misma se han realizado. Uno de los problemas que presenta al analizar grandes volúmenes de opiniones generadas por usuarios es el de que un analista pueda procesarlas de forma rápida y efectiva. Utilizando principalmente la red social Twitter, nos proponemos estudiar, a partir de algunos acontecimientos que produjeron tendencias, la opinión de los usuarios sobre los mismos.
With the introduction of social networks sentiment analysis and opinion mining systems have been of great utility in the last years. The main goal of these activities is to identify in user generated texts positive and negative opinions regarding a specific entity. One common problem of this systems appears when a user wants to analyze big volumes of opinions effectively. Using mainly the Twitter network, we propose to study the opinions of different users for a trending topic.

Most contemporary artists work digitally in one way or another, despite the fact that established art museums do not offer a platform to display digital art, which means that it is difficult for visitors to find it and that media art will have a lower status compared to physical art. For a long time the art museum business has had a complex relationship with the digitization of physical works, virtual museums and intangible art works. These are discussions that had to be ignored when the pandemic started and the art museums were forced to digitize activities that had previously been completely analogous. This report with associated artifacts strives to map digital exhibition trends and create a digital exhibition format that takes into account artistic intention and the art museum's activities, and puts the user experience in focus. The report concludes that it is difficult to generalize when it comes to art, but that digital exhibitions have great potential because you do not have to deal with gravity, wires and other physical aspects when installing digital works in a physical space. Another conclusion is that art museums must begin to look at the developer as part of the core business for the digitization initiatives to work in the long term. Perhaps the pandemic will ultimately mean that art museums to a greater extent dare to break new ground, test new exhibition formats and become more positive about the possibilities of digital exhibition formats.

Physical inactivity in older adults is commonly associated with the development of chronic diseases, poor maintenance of functional status, possible cognitive declines and the loss of physical independence. With the aim of reducing the social and economic burdens generated by the high percentages of older adults in the population, active aging programs have been intensively promoted. These programs, however, suffer from low rates of adherence and a lack of exercise’s personalization that end up in demotivated older adults. Exercise videogames (Exergames) have been established as a fun and enjoyable method to promote physical activity, by using competition, timely feedback, and fun, they counteract the monotony of exercise routines. Although frequently attractive, the use of Exergames for exercise promotion in older adults still faces challenges in demonstrating effectiveness regarding functional fitness, cognitive functions, and game user experience. Moreover, the long-term effects of using Exergames as a structured exercise program in the older population have been rarely investigated. To tackle these limitations in Exergaming research, this thesis uses two different Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) techniques: humancentered design and physiological computing. The main objective is to maximize Exergaming effectiveness via: i) providing a more personalized, diversified and enjoyable game experience through custom-made Exergames and ii) optimizing the body responses while exercising with a physiologically intelligent software layer. First, a set of four Exergames that covers aerobic endurance, muscular strength and motor ability fitness domains were carefully designed via contextual design. Secondly, the biocybernetic loop construct from physiological computing is used to improve the cardiovascular performance of older adults through an Exergame that adapts its difficulty based on game performance and exertion levels, thus persuading players to exert in the desired and recommended levels. Two cross-sectional and two longitudinal controlled studies were completed in local senior gymnasiums with active older adults addressing multiple research questions to unveil the role of customized and adaptive Exergames in promoting physical activity. We demonstrated how attractiveness and effectiveness can be successfully combined in Exergaming design to deliver encouraging and motivating exercises that are equivalent (or sometimes better) to conventional training methods. Moreover, we illustrated the design of a set of physiological computing software tools that can be extensively used for biocybernetic adaptation in videogames, and physiological signal post-processing and interpretation.
A inatividade física nos idosos está comumente associada ao desenvolvimento de doenças crónicas, fraca conservação do estado funcional, possíveis declínios cognitivos e a perda de independência. Com o objetivo de reduzir os fardos sociais e económicos gerados pelas altas percentagens de idosos na população, programas de envelhecimento ativo têm sido promovidos intensivamente. No entanto, estes programas sofrem de baixas taxas de aderência e uma falta de personalização do exercício que resulta em idosos desmotivados. Videojogos de exercício (Exergames) são reconhecidos como um método divertido e agradável de promoção da atividade física, através do uso da competição, feedback pertinente, e diversão estes contrariam a monotonia das rotinas de exercício convencional. Apesar de atraente, o uso de Exergames para a promoção de exercício nos idosos ainda se depara com obstáculos em demonstrar a sua eficácia em termos de melhorias de fitness funcional, funções cognitivas, e experiência do jogador. Ademais, o efeito a longo termo do uso de Exergames como programa estruturado de exercício para idosos raramente foi investigado. Para lidar com essas limitações na área de Exergames esta tese usa duas técnicas de Interação Humano-Computador (HCI) diferentes: design centrado no usuário e computação fisiológica. O principal objetivo é o de maximizar a eficácia da prática de Exergames através de: i) fornecimento de uma experiência de jogo mais personalizada, diversificada e agradável em Exergames feitos à medida e ii) otimização das respostas corporais durante o exercício em Exergames com uma camada de software fisiologicamente inteligente. Primeiro, um conjunto de quatro Exergames abrangentes dos domínios de resistência aeróbica, força muscular e capacidade motora foram cuidadosamente projetados por meio de design contextual. Em segundo lugar, o conceito de malha biocibernética fechada de computação fisiológica foi usada para melhorar o desempenho cardiovascular de idosos através de um Exergame que adapta a sua dificuldade com base no desempenho e níveis de esforço do jogador, persuadindo-os a exercerem os níveis desejados e recomendados. Dois estudos transversais e dois estudos longitudinais controlados foram concluídos em ginásios locais com idosos ativos, abordando várias questões de investigação para desvendar o papel de exergames customizados e adaptativos na promoção da atividade física. Demonstramos como a atratividade e a eficácia podem ser combinadas com sucesso no design de Exergames para fornecer exercícios encorajadores e motivadores que são equivalentes (ou por vezes melhores) aos métodos de treino convencionais. Além disso, apresentamos o design de um conjunto de ferramentas de software de computação fisiológica que podem ser amplamente utilizadas para adaptação biocibernética em videojogos e pós-processamento e interpretação de sinais fisiológicos.