Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions

Internet of Things (IoT) is a new paradigm that includes a network of smart objects, which are embedded sensors, communicating using the Internet. One of the areas that are leading up to IoT is Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp). There are thus solutions such as frameworks, middlewares, and other development artifacts that come from the UbiComp community and can be used for IoT applications. On the other hand, the interaction evaluation of the applications can be more complex in IoT than in UbiComp systems, once we have two different perspectives: Human-Thing and Thing-Thing interactions. In this paper, based on the literature, our experience in these two domains, and case studies with Ubicomp and IoT applications, we discuss how we can benefit from the UbiComp move towards IoT, focusing on the main differences and similarities related to interaction evaluation. These differences open a set of questions that are also presented and discussed in this paper.

Internet of Things (IoT) allows daily objects, with computing and communication capabilities, to connect to the Internet. In this scenario, an application called GREatRoom runs in an IoT environment, which has distributed wireless labels in places and objects, to detect the presence of nearby users, providing services intuitively and efficiently. Considering that IoT systems have quality characteristics of human-computer interaction similar to those of ubiquitous systems, this paper investigates the applicability of software measures from ubiquitous to IoT systems and presents the positive results achieved in this evaluation.

Chinese people has experienced fast iteration of lifestyles within 30 years. The Social Network and the Internet of Things seem to invade their lives. And the combination of them will be more evolutionary.In this paper, firstly, the author explains two typical examples of the Social Network event in China and leads to the three conclusions: Socialization is an inevitable trend for any kind of product on the internet society, China will not be an exception; Any service designed for socialization on the internet in China should be tightly fit to Chinese tradition and culture; Smart phone plays the role of ‘smart’ intermediator in these scenarios. Secondly, based on the review of the Social Network and the Internet of Things, the author concludes that novel concept of SocialInternet of Things (SIoT) is based on a sort of social relationship among objects, analogously to what happens for humanbeings. It has the advantages of navigability, scalable, trustworthiness and openness. And the core issue of the Social Internet of Things is how to make different objects socialized. In the third part, based on the description of the development of the Social Network and the Internet of Things, the author finds out three strategies for objects to establish the relationship. By the analysis of each strategy, the author finally points out that services designed to achieve symbiosis will be the strategy for the Social Internet of Things.

The use and democratisation of new digital technologies have given visibility to groups of people and grassroots organizations that can be considered agents of change in the transition to a more sustainable world. Design plays an important role in the definition of strategies and in the development of innovative solutions to tackle some of the contemporary problems society faces. This paper aims to show several projects developed over the last 5 years in the subject Design for Social Innovation at the Master in Design and the Master in Engineering and Product Design at the University of Aveiro, and its relation to the new social media and technologies. By using Service Design tools to improve Social Innovations and the integration of new digital technologies, we design new and improved solutions to foster sustainable development. The creation of a DESIS Lab has also allowed to develop innovative design solutions within local communities. The methodology used is based on Learning-by-Doing with an important and relevant initial phase using ethnographic methods. The results are showed as academic projects that can be applied and replicated in different contexts.

Projected displays can present life-sized imagery of a virtual human character that can be seen by multiple observers. However, typical projected displays can only render that virtual human from a single viewpoint, regardless of whether head tracking is employed. This results in the virtual human being rendered from an incorrect perspective for most individuals in a group of observers. This could result in perceptual miscues, such as the “Mona Lisa” effect, causing the virtual human to appear as if it is simultaneously gazing and pointing at all observers in the room regardless of their location. This may be detrimental to training scenarios in which all trainees must accurately assess where the virtual human is looking or pointing a weapon. In this paper, we discuss our investigations into the presentation of eye gaze using REFLCT, a previously introduced head mounted projective display. REFLCT uses head tracked, head mounted projectors and retroreflective screens to present personalized, perspective correct imagery to multiple users without the occlusion of a traditional head mounted display. We examined how head mounted projection for enhanced presentation of eye gaze might facilitate or otherwise affect social interactions during a multi-person guessing game of “Twenty Questions.”

This study examines individuals’ motivations to adopt smart technologies for tourism. We employed a case study using a qualitative approach. The results demonstrate that the factors influencing individuals’ initial and post adoption differ significantly. For initial use, intrinsic motivation to know was the most important factor. Introjected regulation was the next most influential factor. Capacity-efforts belief was the most powerful amotivational factor hindering initial adoption. For the post adoption of a smart technology, the results indicates that individuals’ extrinsic motivation (external regulation) was most influential, followed by intrinsic motivations (i.e., intrinsic motivation to know and intrinsic motivation toward accomplishments), which are also vital in predicting post adoption. The results suggest that users valued pleasure and satisfaction from exploring and learning to use a new technology and users were most concerned about practicality in the prolonged use. This research is a starting point for academia and industry to analyze individuals’ diverse motivations regarding smart technology.

A smart building is one of the most typical Internet of Everything (IoE) applications nowadays. Usually, a smart building aims to reduce energy consumption and, consequently, costs, or to enhance the work environment by increasing indoor thermal comfort. In general, building managers and air conditioning system technicians of smart buildings take actions such as increase or decrease the indoor air temperature and ventilation based on the data collected about the rooms (temperature, humidity, overall thermal satisfaction, and others). However, it is not always an easy task to extract useful information from all the data generated from a smart building, given the huge amount of data produced and the particular characteristics of each set of data. Therefore, this paper presents a usability evaluation applied to a Web portal containing charts summarizing both the historical and real-time data collected in a smart building. Taking into account the findings from this usability evaluation, the Web portal was redesigned and re-evaluated, receiving a more positive feedback from users.

Solid state lighting is changing the way humans experience artificial lighting and enhancing the possibilities of control over our built environments. The goal for this research study was to provide insight for designing human centered controls for tunable solid state lighting for the familiar residential application of living room lighting using a ‘Wizard of Oz’ methodology. Eight internal subjects and twenty externally sourced subjects experienced controlling the lighting for common scenarios such as reading, watching TV, having a party, saving a scene and recalling a scene. Three Android based mobile device applications were prepared for voice-only, gesture-only, and voice and gesture combined control. One or more “wizards” were employed to close the control loop between the subject’s verbal commands and gestures and the tunable solid state lighting settings. Voice clips and sensor data were recorded on the phone, video and audio were captured via a wall mounted camera, and observed and documented. The subjects were aware of the audio, video, data, and note taking but not the “wizard” control. The data was analyzed to extract the unique ways subjects used to control the lighting, think-out-loud information and interview answers were analyzed to develop the mental models behind their control attempts and their thought processes used to reach their high level task goals. Conclusions drawn from this research help shape design decisions for tunable solid state lighting solutions and next-generational controls.

While the ubiquitous systems have characteristics that modify the way the user interacts with the systems, Human-Computer Interaction area studies forms of interaction, with usability being one of the main quality criteria. One of the methods used to evaluate usability is Heuristic Evaluation. In the case of ubiquitous systems, that have characteristics such as mobility and context awareness, Nielsen’s heuristics, which are widely used in conventional systems, do not focus on these particularities. Therefore, this work proposes specific heuristics to evaluate the usability of ubiquitous systems. Empirical studies and questionnaires were applied with experts in order to evaluate the proposed heuristics. The results point to improvements in both the way of conducting the evaluation and in the heuristics. From these results, the proposed heuristics were refined.

Gesture-based 3D interaction is a research topic with application in numerous scenarios which gained relevance with the recent advances in low-cost tracking systems. Yet, it poses many challenges due to its novelty and consequent lack of systematic development methodologies. Developing easy to use and learn gesture-based 3D interfaces is particularly difficult since the most adequate and intuitive gestures are not always obvious and there is often a variety of different gestures used to perform similar actions. This paper presents the development and evaluation of interaction methods to manipulate 3D virtual objects in a large display set-up using freehand gestures detected by a Kinect depth sensor. We describe the implementation of these methods and the user studies conducted to improve them and assess their usability as manipulation methods. Based on the results of these studies we also propose a method that overcomes the lack of roll movement detection by the Kinect and makes simpler the scaling and rotation in all degrees-of-freedom using hand gestures.

Research on gestural control interfaces is getting more widespread for the purpose of creating natural interfaces. Two of these popular gesture types are freehand and on-skin touch gestures, because they eliminate the use of an intermediary device. Previous studies investigated these modalities separately with user-elicitation methods; however, there is a gap in the field considering their comparison. In this study, we compare user-elicited on-skin touch and freehand gesture sets to explore users’ preferences. Thus, we conducted an experiment in which we compare 13 gestures to control computer tasks for each set. Eighteen young adults participated in our study and filled our survey consisted of NASA Task Load Index and 4 additional items of social acceptability, learnability, memorability, and the goodness. The results show that on-skin touch gestures were less physically demanding and more socially acceptable compared to freehand gestures. On the other hand, freehand gestures were more intuitive than on-skin touch gestures. Overall, our results suggest that different gesture types could be useful in different scenarios. Our contribution to the field might inspire designers and developers to make better judgments for designing new gestural interfaces for a variety of devices.

In this paper, we present a software framework, called MIDAS-M (Mixing and matching heterogeneous Interaction Devices to Applications and Services) that enables an application to lend itself to many different types of interaction methods and accommodate users with different client devices in a flexible manner. In particular, we focus on the aspect of supporting “multimodal” interaction by defining and mapping events that are mixed and matched by different input/output components. The multimodal events defined this way can be realized on various client platforms according to their capabilities. We also describe a case study of applying MIDAS-M to developing a multimodal interface for a virtual apartment preview system, called the SMARTIS, and demonstrate its advantages.

Whiteboard has long been an important tool for education and communication, and nowadays it embraces display functions and other interactive features such as pen pointing and selecting of digital contents. Despite the enhanced interactivity, it is often time- and cost-consuming to implement specific apparatus for different whiteboard interactions. Therefore, we aimed at incorporating physical-world objects (e.g. Lego Rubik’s cubes) as the cross-objects user interface for multiple whiteboard interaction tasks without incurring heavy development work. The user interface utilised electromagnetic technique to extract electromechanical signals and recognised normal objects, thus extended the generality. To further understand effectiveness of the user interface, we implemented a low-fidelity prototype and conducted within-subject evaluation. The results showed the cross-objects user interface was natural, responsive, and easy of learning as the conventional whiteboard. Moreover, the user interface outperformed over the conventional one in the perspectives of configuration efficiency and versatility of multiple interaction tasks. Given these findings, practical implications for future tangible user interface design for whiteboard interactions are discussed.

Generation Y of the mainland China has the features of “chameleon”: adapting to social rules in society and showing distinct personality in their own small circles. This self-contradictory presentation differentiates it from other groups in a way that is integrated into the real world. We explore the experience design based on tangible computing in the hope of better communication and interaction of Generation Y in the physical environment. We have explored the design principle for Generation Y and the design prototype “chameleon cube” based on this concept: to design a space that allows the Generation Y to experience the public environment and enter into a self-review state, and in this installation, they can relax themselves and also to express individuality. Through experimental observation and data analysis, we verify that the products based on the “chameleon design principle” can explore the characteristics of the Generation Y group and help to enhance the communication skills of Generation Y.

This paper describes a work in progress that exploring the potential of Leap-Motion acquisition system as a believable alternative to multi-touch device to interact with a large curve display: Hyve-3D immersive environment. This system could be used for collaborative ideation with local people working together in the same area and multiple Hyve-3Ds can be connected (via Internet) to share a single work space. Today, Hyve-3D uses a new paradigm of 3D interaction based on tactile device tracked in 6 Degree Of Freedom and it is possible to make immersive sketching with a tactile tablet. We believe that systems of Mid-Air gestures can be an important asset for carrying out, more simply, naturally some tasks. We believe that Leap Motion device must be, not an alternative but an additional solution. This paper proposes a classification of interactions and a distribution by devices. We will define a grammar of gestures and we will offer some technical solutions.

This paper introduces a smart city application to share road conditions. The application is based on a mobile sensing framework to collect sensor data reflecting personal-scale, or microscopic, roadside phenomena using crowdsourcing. To collect data, a driving recorder smartphone application that records not only sensor data but also videos from the driver’s view is used. To extract specific roadside phenomena, collected data are integrated and analyzed at the service platform. One example is estimating road surface conditions. The paper shows our method to estimate road surface type (RST) and road surface shape (RSS). Features are defined in Sequential Forward Floating Search (SFFS) algorithm from collected data. By using random forest as classifier, average recall was about 91% in the $$50\,\mathrm {km/h}$$ – $$80\,\mathrm {km/h}$$ range. The result may support to build a service that provides detected road conditions from up-to-date crowdsourced mobile sensing application.

In this paper, we present a case study for designing a social platform towards environmental sustainability based on Internet-of-Things. The case study we investigate encourages low carbon communities, in particular, to aim for a car-free city. A car-free city promises to make our society more sustainable; however, people must be guided to choose a desirable lifestyle. We will show how our design framework helps to build a better car-free city without affecting citizens’ success. We also show an augmented bicycle prototype that is an Internet of Things (IoT)-enhanced bicycle for promoting bicycle-sharing within communities. Bicycle sharing can help to achieve a car-free city, and IoT-based daily artifacts can contribute to building an effective social platform.

The model representing the complexity of the pedestrian mobility has to incorporate the nature of the modeled phenomenon by accounting the interdependence between human behavior and urban environment. Our efforts are directed towards correlating emergent behavior patterns of different types of pedestrians to contextual knowledge that will help us map realistic pedestrian behavior into agent’s decision making capabilities. We propose that agent’s beliefs, goals and decision-making strategies should be derived directly from the integrated urban knowledge. Causal probabilistic models that are based on Bayesian inference are proposed as a potential solution to some of the challenges in the pedestrian agent modeling.

Smart built environments enhanced with technology can improve the lives of individuals, groups, and the broader community. Internet of Things (IoT), a collection of networked and interacting embedded devices, could provide the necessary infrastructure and enabling technologies to design, develop and deploy smart built-environments. We describe an approach to modeling IoT-based smart built environments that uses a large-scale virtual environment where a building model is aligned with the physical space. This approach takes advantages of affordances and embodied cognition in a large physical space to model user interaction with built spaces. The built space contains ‘smart objects’ with embedded sensors/actuators/controllers (e.g., kitchen appliances). A ‘smart object’ has the corresponding virtual object in the virtual environment. We build on our work on the conceptual design of interaction middleware and context sensitive interaction interoperability frameworks to develop support for a living ecosystem of services, a service framework, to support interactions with a smart built-environment. We illustrate the proposed framework on a case study, a living lab for smart built-environments that includes a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, an office, and a bedroom.

Based on users’ needs as the starting point, this thesis investigated the related services of current situation of domestic and foreign through the huge data analysis of consumption trends in Chinese City family meals. It combined the method of service design with the technology of Internet of Things to re-plan the “service blueprint”, and explore the innovation strategy of the food ordering service system design Chinese urban commuters. Also, it enhanced the satisfaction of user experience, and created a higher commercial value and social value.

Real-time visualization of the degree of indoor congestion is very useful to improve users’ experience in public spaces such as an event space or a shopping mall by helping users to identify crowded places to avoid congestion. However, it is difficult to develop a low-cost congestion visualization system. We designed a low-cost system for real-time visualization of indoor congestion degree with smartphone-based participatory sensing. The system is cost-effective, using Wi-Fi access point fingerprint-based indoor localization and Bluetooth-based congestion sensing with smartphone-based participatory sensing. In this paper, we develop a prototype of the proposed system. Moreover, we evaluate the prototype system from two aspects: first, how low is the cost of the system for sensing; second, how close is the relationship between congestion and the number of Bluetooth devices. We experimented in two places and found that the proposed system is cost-effective and the number of Bluetooth devices does have a relationship with the degree of congestion.

Acoustic ecology data have been used for various types of soundscape investigations. Counting sounds in the soundscape is considered an effective method in ecology studies and offers comparative data for human-caused impacts on the environment. One particularly valuable dataset of broadcasted recordings from the “difficult-to-return zone (exclusion zone)” area, 10 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was collected by Hill H. Kobayashi and H. Kudo in the Oamaru District (Namie, Fukushima, Japan) in 2016. These audio samples, which have not yet been analyzed (a total of over 700 h in MP3 format), were continuously transmitted in a live stream of sound from an unmanned remote sensing station in the area. In 2016, the first part of that collection of audio sample covering the transmitted sound recording from the station was made available on the project website. The data package described here covers the bioacoustics in the area. We expect these recordings to prove useful for studies on topics, which include radioecology and the emerging dialects for future observations.

This work highlights issues associated with the sharing and using of data for learning and solution making in smart cities and learning cities. Moving beyond dichotomous dystopian and utopian views of civic tech, smart cities, and urban data initiatives, this paper explores everyday understandings of data through diverse voices. Theoretically this work uses the contructs of awareness, learning, openness, and meaningful engagement to explore civic tech and ambient data in 21st century cities. Using an exploratory case study approach, data were collected through interview and survey from individuals in small to medium to large sized cities, mostly in Canada but also extending to Europe. In parallel with this study ancedotal evidence was gathered from people across the city through group and individual discussions enabling further analysis, comparison, and triangulation of data. This work contributes to theorizing of the ambient data concept in the context of smart cities; further develops the learning cities component of smart cities; formulates and operationalizes an ambient data framework for smart cities; and sheds light on the complex challenges of aware technologies as opportunities for increased human potential. Going forward, this opening of an ambient data space provides opportunities for further development, debate, and exploration for both practice and research.

Because of social computing, people are more interconnected to things and vice versa. Social computing transforms the Internet of Things to a new form called “Social Internet of Things”. The social Internet of Things needs a social approach to the Internet of Things. It is equally true that design in the context of social computing also requires a social approach to the Internet of Things. A human-object mixed social interaction model or a social approach is demonstrated in this paper and based on which a children-centered social thing, specifically an intelligent painting device is shown in this paper, whose objective is to create a superpower interaction for children and mix the human-human social network with object-object machine network to form a social network consisting of humans and objects and emotions, which focuses more on machine emotion, children behavior and children emotion.

Architectural reconstruction based on photographs is important for digitally archiving historic buildings. In addition, freely exploring a reconstructed Virtual Environment (VE) enhances users’ understanding of and interest in the background cultural information. However, reconstructed models often have errors as well as terribly distorted views when viewed from a point distant from where the pictures were taken. Because of this problem, it is difficult to allow users to freely explore in a VE while keeping photorealistic views.In this study, we propose a new method that enables both free exploration and high rendering quality by implicitly guiding users to the well-rendered viewpoints. First, we evaluate the rendering quality of the reconstructed model with view-dependent texture mapping. Second, by combining the evaluation results, we create a type of potential field that defines which direction to guide the users. Experimental results suggest that our proposed method can decrease the distortion in the views during VE exploration, and can possibly allow free exploration in VEs.

AR technology has been rapidly accepted in the cultural heritage domain, which requires wide context information for complete understanding as providing an enhanced experience to the user with related information of the physical world. However, currently, there are several limitations for seamless AR such as applications in outdoor environments and wearable platforms. To address this issue, we introduce our AR platform in this paper that supports the outdoor AR and wearable platform. Through the standardized metadata schema-based data retrieval, time-space correlated AR content containing the assorted context information can be provided to users. In addition, vision- and sensor-based spatial data composition technology supports stable 3D outdoor tracking. Finally, an immersive visualization provisioning module, which integrates the aforementioned component, provides a 360-degree panorama virtual reality for wearable platforms and the outdoor AR in mobile platforms. Using this platform, we expect a seamless context-aware AR service in the cultural heritage domain.

In this paper, we present our study that analyzes collections of flyers in different museums using statistical modeling techniques and show that sensing and analyzing interactions with physical flyers can uncover invisible differences among museums, thereby demonstrating the feasibility of our approach that focuses on visitors’ interactions with physical objects to characterize physical spaces. Moreover, our study suggests the potential of multi-tiered analyses according to the structures of social practices around physical objects.

The rapid development of virtual reality has brought opportunities to colleges and universities, challenging them to produce skilled graduates in the field. From the perspective of arts colleges and universities, the question of how to build an educational system of digital arts content in virtual reality has become a forward-looking subject in today’s digital art education. The Virtual Reality Art discipline of Nanjing University of the Arts has been refining its art curriculum through the creation and development of this academic major, in line with market demand and the university’s existing educational characteristics. This has greatly promoted the overall development of the discipline, providing some guidance and reference for the development of related majors in other Chinese institutes.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interesting in studying of painting images. It is obvious that there exists a deep gap between painting images and natural images, due to special characteristics of painting images. Therefore, general image classification methods are not suitable to be applied directly to the painting images. This paper demonstrates a simple, yet powerful on-line learning algorithm to classify the category of painting images. Specifically, we use the multi-features combining of local and global features as the image descriptor, and then K-means is applied to initialize the dictionary. We resort to the online learning method to optimize the dictionary which then served as a codebook for spare coding of multi-features. Finally, we facilitate the linear support vector machine to classify images. The experimental results on two painting image datasets show that, compared with the traditional image classification method, our method has improved the accuracy of image classification. What’s more, from the practical viewpoint, our online learning mechanism can be also useful for many other pattern recognition tasks. Based on the research results of this paper, it can be applied in various fields such as art field and art analysis, the research of this paper provides a new way for art researchers to explore the potential of computer-aided analysis of painting works and promote the development of art research. Painting image classification could be used in social internet of things such as in museum, to make people understand the painting more in-depth.

In this research, we developed “ESPSAS” platform of IoT. It is based on ESP-12F, and the platform consists of three systems, thing system, website system and communication system. The platform solves the issues in art creation: the need for light, cheap chips in volume. In addition, another feature of the ESPSAS platform is its connection design. We propose a double-registered synchronization that confirms the complex communication within the thing system. We have already installed “ESPSAS” IoT Platform at Taipei Nan-men Elementary School in Taiwan and has run “Windflower ESPSAS” project, allowing students in elementary school to be makers and to create their own windflower things and to decorate the campus with social network art creation as their community cultural development on campus. Owing to the structure design of the windflower IoT thing and ESPSAS platform we developed, the windflower is a spinning pinwheel by day, a colorful lantern by night. People can appreciate the spinning of their own windflower on campus remotely via cellphone, and alter its light color remotely with cellphone. This study utilizes IoT technology to equip things and interfaces with transparency in a space, so that individual’s emotional memory may become transparent and extend from the campus into the cloud. We look forward to the applications of this outcome to more artistic design and creative fields in the days to come.

This paper presents an augmented reality (AR) authoring system that enables an ordinary user to easily build an AR environment by manipulating and placing 3D virtual objects. The system tracks users’ hand motions via an RGB-D camera which built-in an optical see-through (OST) head mounted display (HMD), and interactive features applied to virtual objects by the pre-defined hand gestures. In addition, the virtual objects and dynamic paths are placed by using a smartphone in a real-world space. To implement this system, three cored technologies are needed: (i) segmentation of regions of spaces and real-world objects (ii) hand tracking and gesture recognition for manipulating virtual objects, (iii) dynamic path placing of virtual objects using a smartphone wearing an OST HMD. We implement a prototype of the proposed system for testing its feasibility. To the end, we expect that our system enables simplify AR technology usage to ordinary users who are unfamiliar with professional AR authoring tools.

With the development of economy and the increase of social pressure, the proportion of working time for people is increasing year by year, which directly leads to the continuous expansion of the number of sedentary population. A large number of studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle has become a global public health problem, which has a negative impact on human life. Unhealthy sitting posture can lead to many diseases. When people sitting for a long time, the unbalanced force may lead to some diseases such as sitting sores and lumbar disc herniation, lumbar spine injury etc. Therefore, it is necessary to study the pressure distribution in the sitting position. Smart seat and mobile application designed for sedentary people is an effective tool for the prevention of these diseases, the pressure center of the body posture can be detected and analyzed, in order to guide people to the correct posture, help prevent disease due to unbalanced posture.The smart cushion is composed of three parts: pressure data acquisition module (internet of things), data receiving and processing module, data storage and analysis module. This study expounds the theory of sitting posture, explains the mechanism causing pathological effect and psychological effects of sedentary, and then makes a literature review, describes the research status of the pressure distribution of sitting posture, thermal comfort and cushion design, as a standard reference for subsequent design. This study gives definition and classification of sedentary population, puts forward the scheme of smart cushion and mobile application for the sedentary people, and focuses on the function, design and implementation of each module. Finally, it shows the hard and soft system, and tests normal subjects and patients with lumbar spine disease using the smart cushion. The analysis and experimental results show that the design of the smart cushion scheme is reasonable and feasible, and can realize the dynamic and real-time measurement of the pressure center in the sitting posture, and cumulative effect calculation.

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) applications aim to allow elderly, sick and disabled people to stay safely at home while collaboratively assisted by their family, friends and medical staff. AAL, recently empowered by the Internet of Things, introduces a new healthcare connectivity paradigm that interconnects mobile apps and sensors allowing constant monitoring of the patient. Preserving privacy in the course of recognition of postures and classification of activities is one of the challenges for human-sensing and a critical factor of user acceptance, so there is a demand for solutions that do not require real live imaging in AAL.This paper addresses this challenge through the usage of a low resolution thermal sensor and machine learning techniques, discussing the feasibility of low cost and privacy protecting solutions. We evaluated decision tree models in two tasks of human-sensing, presence and posture recognition, using data of different days and volunteers. We also contribute by providing public domain datasets, collected in a bedroom and a bathroom, which are described in this paper.

Empty nest is a global social phenomenon that is constantly increasing during the recent decades. The loneliness and depression faced by parents and children lead to a decrease in life quality and other health problems especially for the families with international students. Remote family communication is crucial to reduce the symptoms and improve mental and physical health. Traditional verbal communication methods require synchronous interaction with a convenient time and a suitable environment. We aim to work on this issue from a perspective of immersive and transparent interaction through the ambient display. Based on a series of user research and iterations of concept development, our design outcome FAMILINK employs existing technologies and methods to offer a novel non-intrusive information communication experience. It constructs a cohesive system that generalizes collected data into ambient hologram display and projection and informs the user other family members’ real-time statuses in an ambient approach.

In the city life with increasingly advanced technology, sociality tends to be more subtle. Although people, who have remote interpersonal intimacy, can watch or hear from each other, they cannot feel the real emotions from the other party. Especially, breath means existence in intimacy, and it is conductive to soothing emotion. This paper proposed a pair of interactive breathing sofa systems to communicate with each partner’s breath tempo in real time. Also, the shared semi-virtual space and telepresence are established to enhance the emotional exchange and resonance in long-distance relationship. Each sofa can measure the user’s breathing tempo and send it to the partner’s sofa. In addition to strengthening emotional communication of long-distance relationship, the installation aims to design and realize the enhancement of remote emotional interaction, bio-signals communication, telepresence, and telepathy of ExtraSensory Perception.

In Chinese hospitals, each patient is checked regularly during their night time. This happens to confirm that there are no emergency situations in which a patient is in need of immediate help. Because the regular checking can be very annoying for patients who are sleeping due to noise, we are looking for a solution to solve this problem using technology. The focus lies on non-obtrusive sensing technologies and on the social relation between patient and doctor. Two prototypes were developed, tested and evaluated on their usability to monitor patients from the central nurse station without disturbing them. The first prototype consists of a piezoelectric sensor with filtering circuit which measures the heartbeats. The second consists of a capacitive sensor capable of sensing the presence of a patient in the bed. Both sensors are placed under the mattress of the patient with as a result that they are not bothered while being monitored.

As a subtype of pervasive development disorder, autism has unknown cause of disease and no completely rehabilitated cases to date. However, in the golden intervention period from 2 to 6 years old, scientific rehabilitation training may significantly improve the condition of the children patients. Therefore, in professional and timely initial assessment, diagnosis and continuous treatment, data continuity is of great importance to the rehabilitation service of autistic children. But, a lot of reasons such as shortage of professionals, irregular industry and limited coverage of rehabilitation institutions make professional and timely assessment and rehabilitation services not available to autistic children. In combination with the approach of designing an interactive service system, the application practice of the rehabilitation service system with individual assessment data of autistic children being the core in the internet environment was introduced in this article.

Human-computer interaction (HCI) design has its main focus on the needs of users, an approach known as user-centered design. Designing online courses is a field of human-computer research that integrates ubiquitous technology, cognition and design. The development of an online course is prototype-driven. Unfortunately, there is a lack of documented methods for assessing the design of a prototype course before it is presented to students. This paper should contribute to this need by proposing a method for evaluating online course designs based on eye tracking data, which can significantly help designers in analysing the public’s behavior. Some of these measures include content fixation points, gaze position, duration and blink rate. Designers can also gather data about how stressed out or relaxed the test users are, how attentive they are and how they solve problems. Affectivity can also be measured and this can be used to create a more customized environment for content acquisition and learning. In this paper we set out to: (1) describe the general methodology of using eye tracking to design and evaluate an online course prototype (2) discuss interaction design challenges related to this methodology and its limitations. In order to guide our discussion we will refer to an actual ongoing online course project about epilepsy that will be used to train schoolteachers.

Visualization scientists seek means to inspire insights from data, which require creative thinking on the part of analysts as well as cognitive reasoning. In information visualization a focus on the user has proven highly effective in the design of usable and engaging interfaces, although it has been argued that such a focus limits innovation in insights about the data and in the creation of metaphors for visualization. If a user-centered design recapitulates existing knowledge, then a design approach which derives exclusively from the data may provide more innovative results. Our approach considers both the designers and the users, whereby our goal is to elicit creativity in both the design of visualization tools and in their application. We compare user-centered design and data-driven design through tool sets that emerged from each of these methods. User-centered design methodologies were used in the creation of a custom interface for editors at a major national newspaper that visualizes measures of each story’s popularity. Data-driven design methodologies were used to create a tangible user interface for data visualization. With UCD we built a tool that supported the use of data in editorial decisions and deployed familiar metaphors to encourage significant change in workplace practice. With DDD we unleashed creativity on the part of analysts which resulted in a more innovative approach on the part of designers and a gateway to new user communities. We compare strengths and weaknesses of each methodology through a reflection of our design outcomes.

The SEE BEYOND teaching method is designed to include people with visual impairment in higher education fashion-design courses. This method employs a wide range of teaching material that is commonly used in Brazilian higher education institutions. Neuroscience is regarded as a field of knowledge that is essential for creating instruments and carrying out activities aimed at the sensory-motor stimulation of students, whether blind or with normal sight, and encourage them to be involved in the teaching methodology of the Fashion Design project. This article addresses the first of the three modules that structure the SEE BEYOND method: Foundation. The undertaking is combined with the following neuroscientific concepts: Identification, Abstraction, Appropriation and Consolidation. It examines the various ways the module can assist students with congenital and acquired blindness, particularly with regard to the following: (a) the recognition of contours and surfaces; (b) spatial perception based on the relation between two-dimensional and three-dimensional planes; (c) the creative process; (d) the links between the mould and garment; (e) the consolidation of skills; (f) and the exercise of self-criticism.

The present article aims at observing the possible interactions/cognitions of users, based on the activities and events that take place in the built spaces of a public building wherein educational, ludic, creative and experimental experiences occur. In this investigation, we will focus on the building that houses the Red Bull Station in São Paulo, Brazil, in particular the spatial arrangements of the Classroom, as they have been adapted to provide great flexibility for the artistic practices that are developed following the curatorial and projectual proposal. In the proposed study, the object of analysis are three situations that occur in the venue’s auditorium, which elicit and foster interactions and cognitions resulting from and rooted in a variety of content knowledge. The analysis of the aforementioned space is performed based on an understanding of the Classroom as a complex and fluid system, whereby the relations between the user and the built environment are alterable and articulated with the spatial configuration in which they occur. This condition foregrounds the great relevance of both the vision and the actual architectural design of the Classroom, as proposed by the Red Bull Station for the occupation/participation/experimentation of the user, whereby a crossover of educational, creative and cultural activities takes place. For this reason, the diversity of spatial arrangements provides a noteworthy experience, which stimulates and fosters open interactive engagements and encounters. The Red Bull Station’s proposal is articulated with a significant level of complexity, which allows for a constantly changing space, affording projectual flexibility to the project. Ultimately, this expands the possibilities for interaction and fosters a dynamic creative and cognitive process. As a result of the study, it can be observed that the Classroom’s projectual design provides much potential for interaction between the space and the user, and a high level of adaptability which enables a broad range of activities to be carried out.

As an alternative to traditional laser cutting, we present LaserLeast, a fabrication-oriented design system that produce 3D objects using a laser cutter to bridge the gaps in prototyping from software to hardware and further evoke energy- and resource-saving consciousness in rapid manufacturing context. The key idea behind our system is that it employs a line-based strategy to improve the original workflow at the 2D output arrangement stage by using two shapes sharing one cutting line, and create a line-based workflow without a 3D modeling stage using three customizable components (line shape, 2.5D technique, and assemble plug). We compare LaserLeast with the traditional strategy with two use cases to address the advantages and limitations and show that LaserLeast has the potential to stimulate the creativity of product designers and the human computer interaction community to enhance productivity in both design and laser cutting through the Internet.

Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) games are changing the way players interact with other players and in cities in the real world. The game’s content influences players’ decision to explore the outside world (whole body movement outside the house) instead of staying inside playing stationary games (not whole body movement required). While users interact with these games in the real world, humorous experiences may occur while players attempt to accomplish a goal. In this paper, we discuss the humor interaction implications that Pokémon Go has in the player’s experience in the real world. We also describe how these games can provide humor occurrences based on the theories of humor. We aim to provide a discussion on humorous situations that players experience and contribute design guidelines on incorporating humor in mobile AR games based on what players have experienced.

This paper aims to explore the concept of “digital healing,” in which the authors use current virtual reality technology to change the medium in which traditional play therapy practices are delivered. This paper discusses the history of play therapy and the history of virtual reality technology, and how these two concepts can be combined to create digital sand trays. The paper cites current Virtual Reality trends, and explores impacts these current trends can have on other play therapy practices. The paper also explores the author’s current research and future implications of this research.

Games are propitious environments for the appearing of new behavior patterns (emergence). It’s necessary to comprehend the nature of these changes taking into account demands and their modifying potential on this process. To support this trajectory, concepts of emergence were presented back from classical sciences to contemporary studies which touch metadesign and game design. This paper aims to investigate the phenomenon of emergence in digital games, encompassing the utilization of projective resources that can increase the interactivity and trigger this process. The research involves literature review, articulation of concepts of complex adaptive system (CAS), emergence incidence in game design and the analysis of three selected objects: Tibia, PokemonGO and The Sims. The perspectives of metadesign usage and artificial intelligence are highlighted as propeller resources of new behaviors. The context, phenomenon and tool relation is discussed concerning: adaptive complex systems, emergence and artificial intelligence. This paper concludes that the usage of methodologies which incorporate metadesign and the gamer as co-designer are more appropriate when dealing with the emergent character of games. Furthermore, the use of artificial intelligences expands the possibilities of interaction in the game, multiplying the amount of active agents in the system.

This study presents a literature review of previous studies of Augmented Reality (AR) games for learning. We classified learner groups, learning subjects, and learning environments mentioned in the literature. From this we conclude that AR games for learning generally have positive effects. We found that the most reported effects for AR learning games were the enhancement of learning performance and the learning experience in terms of fun, interest, and enjoyment. The most commonly used measurements for learning achievements were pre-test and post-test regarding knowledge content, while observations, questionnaires, and interviews were all frequently used to determine motivation. We also found that social interactions were encouraged by AR learning games, especially collaboration among students. The most commonly used game elements included quizzes and goal-setting. Extra instructional materials, 3D models, and face-to-face interactions were most frequently used for AR features. In addition, we came up with five suggestions for the design of AR learning games based on reviewed studies. In conclusion, six interesting findings were discussed in detail in the review, and suggestions for future study were offered to fill the research gaps.

Understanding humor in human social interaction is a prerequisite to the creation of engaging interactions between humans and digital assistants, embodied conversational agents and social robots. As these HCI methods become more prevalent and pervasive, more advanced conversational discourse abilities will be required. However, many models of dialogue and human communication used in computer science remain based upon out-dated understanding of the manner in which humans communicate with one another. This paper addresses these issues introducing a view of communication based on Relevance theory and the Analogical Peacock Hypothesis in which humor and humorous interactions are viewed as ostensive challenges inviting the receiver of a communication to engage in greater levels of cognitive processing and effort to resolve the challenge set by a humorous display. The increased effort is rewarded with positive socio-cognitive effects—a humorous payoff and knowledge of the mind-reading abilities of the humor producer.

Both toy and games industries are investing in hybrid play products. In these scenarios user access the system using toys as input/output, thus, they consist of playful user interfaces. Such systems are complex artifacts since they use real and virtual information. Therefore, they present new challenges to both designers and developers. We supposed both industries could benefit from hybrid design approaches since product concepts. Hence, we applied the model of hybrid gameplay as a practical tool for designing such systems. To achieve it, we included the model in a 16-week class to design hybrid games. In this paper, we detailed model usage in course schedule, and discussed how students experienced it. Besides, we presented student’s six working prototypes, including design cycles, and playtesting sessions. After class, we conducted semi-structured interviews with student’s representatives. Results revealed model usefulness to describe the system setup and interface elements. Furthermore, according to students, the model vocabulary facilitated communication among team members. Finally, we proposed improvements in model nomenclature based on student’s feedback. In addition, we recommend a few topics for a methodological approach to design hybrid games.

The goal of this paper is to investigate the use of visualization as an approach to modeling humor within text. In particular, we developed algorithmic and automated approaches to visualizing and detecting shifts in interpretation as intelligent agents parse meaning from garden path jokes. Garden path jokes can occur when a reader’s initial interpretation of an ambiguous text turns out to be incorrect, leading them down the wrong path to a semantic dead end. Given new information, semantic incongruities arise that require resolution, often triggering a humorous response. This is a work of visual text mining, that is visualizing texts in order to detect patterns and features associated with various text based phenomena such as humor. In this paper we describe three successful approaches to text visualization conducive to identifying distinguishing features given humorous and non humorous texts. These are the use of paired collocated coordinates, heat maps, and two-dimensional Boolean plots. The proposed methodology and tools offer a new approach to testing and generating hypotheses related to theories of humor as well as other phenomena involving incongruity-resolution and shifts in interpretation including non-verbal humor.

Pokémon Go is a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) game that blends gameplay with real-life outdoor physical activity. In this game, players locate, catch and interact with virtual creatures called Pokémon. Initial reports and online players’ statistics suggest that Pokémon Go motivates players to go outside and become more active. This paper describes an online survey we designed and conducted with players from varied locations and different backgrounds. The goal was to gain initial insight about WHY players spend time on this game and WHAT are their primary motivations; WHEN and HOW they play the game; and WHAT potential changes in physical activity Pokémon Go may elicit from players. Free-to-play, location-based AR mobile games like Pokémon Go are likely to become a new design model for gamified applications that promote physical activity. However, our results imply that in order to sustain motivation and physical activity, the core gameplay and mechanics require thoughtful and engaging design. Further long-term research is needed to understand the benefits and concerns of the game.

We discuss ideas and propose resources on humor facilitation, as an extension of previous work on this topic. Specifically, we describe a method for achieving humor facilitation as the combination of event detection and generation of funny comments. We focus on user’s mistakes as the preferred unexpected and potentially humorous events. Moreover, we implemented an online testbed consisting of a humor facilitator and two interactive environments: a text editor and a video game. The system is meant to provide a tool for empirical evaluation of the proposed framework.

Human speakers do not create metaphors in a vacuum. Our rhetorical urges are tempered by a variety of contextual factors, such as ethos (does a metaphor reflect my values?), relevance (does a metaphor speak to my topic?), timeliness (is this a good time to use this metaphor?) and affect (does this metaphor stir the desired emotions in my audience?). The 24-h news cycle offers an ideal setting in which to explore automated metaphor generation that is both timely and topical, as not only do journalists rely on pithy metaphors to attract readers, readers often respond to the news with wittily apt, conversation-sparking metaphors of their own. Indeed, as micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter provide digital printing presses for the masses that also allow us to turn our lives and opinions into 140-character headlines, we can use computational techniques to craft personalized metaphors that suit a specific human recipient. In this paper we explore metaphor generation techniques that are shaped for a specific topical context, using approaches to topic modeling such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation, or that reflect the online personality of a specific recipient, as evidenced by their most recent emations or tweets. Each approach is instantiated in an autonomous Twitterbot, a system that creates and tweets its own content without human curation. We use Twitterbots to study the potential for humour to arise from the timely online interaction of humans and machines.