Human Interface and the Management of Information. Information and Knowledge Design

Manufacturing processes such as monitoring and controlling typically confront the user with a variety of heterogeneous data sources and systems. The cognitive efforts to summarize and combine the data from these different sources affect the user’s efficiency. Our goal is to support the user in his work task by integrating the data and presenting them in a more perceivable way. Hence, we introduce an approach in which different data sources are integrated in an annotated semantic knowledge base: our domain ontology. Based on this ontology, contextually relevant data for a specific work task is selected and embedded into a meta-visualization providing an overview of the data based on the user’s mental model. Two systems finally exemplify the usage of our approach.

Flash flooding can be difficult to predict using traditional, rainfall threshold-based approaches. New initiatives like the Flooded Locations and Simulated Hydrographs (FLASH) project provide real-time information using rainfall observations to force distributed hydrologic models to predict flash flooding events. However, in order to address the goal of creating a weather-ready nation, system designers must not only possess tools that relay useful information, but such tools must also be able to communicate environmental threats to stakeholders in a clear and easy-to-use interface. Where previous research has addressed the performance of forecasting models, the present study uses a human factors approach to enhance FLASH’s ability to present information to decision-makers (i.e., forecasters).

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems empower employees with access to vast amounts of data from across the organization. Learning how to navigate an enterprise system and explore the data within, however, can require herculean effort. Despite the efficacy of visualizations for enhancing knowledge discovery and exploration, they have yet to be applied to assisting users of ERP systems. In this paper, we present two visualization components designed specifically for those users. The first provides an easy-to-use search interface for visualizing relationships between data entities, while the second supports navigation via an interactive map. Both have been implemented in a prototype for validation in future studies.

Problem identification and solution finding are major challenges in policy modeling. Statistical indicator-data build the foundation for most of the required analysis work. In particular finding effective and efficient policies that solve an existing political problem is critical, since the forecast validation of the effectiveness is quite difficult. Simulation technologies can help to identify optimal policies for solutions, but nowadays many of such simulators are stand-alone technologies. In this paper we introduce a new visualization approach to enable the coupling of statistical indicator data from Open Government Data sources with simulators and especially simulation result data with the goal to provide an enhanced impact analysis for political analysts and decision makers. This allows, amongst others a more intuitive and effective way of solution finding.

Association rule learning is a popular and well-researched set of methods for discovering interesting relations between entities in large databases in real-world problems. In this regard, an intelligent offshore oil industry environment is a very complex scenario and Occupational Health and Security (OHS) is a priority issue as it is an important factor to reduce the number of accidents and incidents records. In the oil industry, there exist standards to identify and record workplace accidents and incidents in order to provide guiding means on prevention efforts, indicating specific failures or reference, means of correction of conditions or circumstances that culminated in accident. OHS’s employees are in charge of analyzing the mined rules to extract knowledge. In most of cases these users has two main challenges during this process: (i) to explore the measures of interestingness (confidence, lift, support, etc.) and (ii) to understand and analyze the large number of association rules. In this sense, an intuitive visualization of mined rules becomes a key component in a decision-making process. In this paper, we propose a novel visualization of spatio-temporal rules that provides the big picture about risk analysis in a real world environment. Our main contribution lies in an interactive visualization of accident interpretations by means of well-defined spatio-temporal constraints, in the oil industry domain.

This study explored the expression differences between designer-interpolated shapes and computer-interpolated shapes under affective perceptual map. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) program was applied to construct product perceptual space as the basis to demonstrate the relationship among interpolation stimuli and affective adjectives. The designer-interpolated kettles have the tendency to design more fresh and modern images. Comparing the average distance between designer-interpolated kettles and midpoint of the source kettle, it is clear that the operations of interpolation image on the “simple-complex” axis are easier to create than the “contemporary-traditional” and “emotional-rational” axes. This study also proves the relationship between the computer-interpolated shapes and their affective responses to be nonlinear and non-uniform. The results showed under a condition of free design expression for the designer, the design purpose not only yields a finished product appearance but also represents the designer’s will.

Individuals living in our information-driven society can feel overwhelmed by the amount of information as well as the myriad of technologies they can use to access it. Personal information management (PIM) is an activity in which an individual stores personal information items in order to retrieve them later. One ideal of PIM is that we always have the right information in the right place, in the right form, and of sufficient completeness and quality to meet our current needs. Personal information storage tends to become enormous over time. In addition, its structure can also become diversified and complex, resulting in information that is scattered in different forms across various devices and multiple versions. One way to solve the issue of information fragmentation is to emphasize the concept of remembering to look. Most information management system representations are using spatial metaphors, where virtual objects are displayed similar to physical objects in the actual world. The power of spatial metaphors lies in people’s tendency to naturally use spatial metaphors.

Sensor data has been coined the oil of the 21st century. We present a technique for the visual analysis of multivariate sensor event log data. This technique tackles two challenges: Firstly, in a complex process the relation of causes and effects is often masked by indirections. Secondly, the metrics to measure success might be different from the measures that identify causes. Thus, our approach does not require that all sensor data is equal. Our techniques combines automated and interactive grouping to identify candidate sets sharing properties relevant for cause and effect analysis. Interactive visual probes offer immediate information on the statistical relevance of an identified connection.

Situation awareness (SAW) is the perception of environmental elements within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future. Processes of acquisition, maintenance and recovering of situation awareness, guided by information visualization methods, may be affected by problems related to the quality of information processing and display, undermining the

decision

-making process. Among such problems, uncertainty, general dimension and association with the complete gathering of information may arise from the acquisition to its processing and cognition in SAW-oriented systems. Thus, the present study describes the creation of a framework that integrates and disseminates issues related to quality of information and quality of representation, involving the application of graphical representation techniques of uncertainties generated by the dimensions of completeness, consistency and dimensions related to time, such as currently. A case study of emergency management information display will be discussed to illustrate the applicability of the representative framework to improve situation awareness, as well as the graphical representation techniques of uncertainty. Results of this study are discussed, and they point out the contribution to the process of situation awareness of emergency management makers.

This paper introduces a graphical concept and an implementation for visualizing psychophysiological data in human computer interaction. Psychobiological measurements result in huge datasets, which are mandatory for the development of semi-automatic or automated emotion classification and hence a reliable planning and decision-making system called companion system. The mentioned amount of data calls for the need of making dependencies and coherences in those datasets visible for the human eye in addition to algorithmic pattern recognition and feature selection. Seeing through the data by exploring it playfully helps experts understanding the data structure and provokes non-specialists’ curiosity.

In this paper, we propose a method to visualize information regarding hobbies and interests of a person inferred from tweets on Twitter to support informal communication in the real world. Analysis of the current states and experiments on informal communication clarified that it is important and useful for a person to know information such as hobbies, interests and other attributes which indicate background of his/her partner to start and maintain a first and good meeting. Through experimental results, we demonstrated that our proposed social profile diagram was effective for informal communication.

As modern organizations become more agile and support more complex business processes, acquiring the right set of talent is becoming crucial for their operations. One of the key talent acquisition problems is staffing a team that has requirement for multiple job descriptions, from a pool of external candidates. This team hiring problem may arise for (i) a new organization, (ii) a new group in an existing organization, or (iii) an existing group that faces high attrition level. This paper presents a Talent Acquisition Decision Support System (TADSS) that provides decision support for team hiring. The system first builds a weighted graph based model for the three types of Human Resource (HR) entities in the problem setup (jobs, employees and candidates), and the inter-relationship among them. Next, an algorithm based on spectral embedding of the HR Graph is used to select teams. The system then provides an interactive team selection and comparison interface based on the HR Graph. Simulation-based evaluations show the effectiveness of the proposed system in team formation.

An information landscape is commonly used to represent relatedness in large, high-dimensional datasets, such as text document collections. In this paper we present interactive metaphors, inspired in map reading and visual transitions, that enhance the landscape representation for the analysis of topical changes in dynamic text repositories. The goal of interactive visualizations is to elicit insight, to allow users to visually formulate hypotheses about the underlying data and to prove them. We present a user study that investigates how users can elicit information about topics in a large document set. Our study concentrated on building and testing hypotheses using the map reading metaphors. The results show that people indeed relate topics in the document set from spatial relationships shown in the landscape, and capture the changes to topics aided by map reading metaphors.

Numerous information visualization techniques are available for utilizing and analyzing big data. Among which, network visualization that employs node-link diagrams can determine the relationship among multi-dimensional data. However, when data become extremely large, visualization becomes obscure because of visual clutter. To address this problem, many edge bundling techniques have been proposed. However, although graphs have several attributions, previous techniques do not reflect these attributions. In this paper, we propose a new edge bundling method for attributed co-occurrence graphs. Electrostatic forces work between each pair of edges; however, if the edges are under different attributions, then repulsion works between pairs. By bundling edges under the same attribution, a graph can more clearly show the relationships among data.

We present a platform for prototyping and testing the information architecture of multifunctional products. A prototyping component supports the creation of feature outlines and their rendering into clickable prototypes. A user testing component implements an experimental method for characterizing the schemata operations involved during first use of multistate interfaces. Generation of the experimental material is automated via natural language processing techniques. The platform supports remote type of interface testing and fits well the needs for agile and data-informed user-centered design.

The U.S. Census Bureau conducted a usability research study using 3 published Census infographics on different topics containing statistics produced from Census survey data. The study used a mixed-factorial design with repeated measures, comparing user performance (accuracy of information recall and accuracy of searching for information) and satisfaction after using either the 3 infographics, or 3 text documents containing the same information. 55 participants were randomly assigned to either the Infographics condition or the Documents condition, accordingly. Results revealed significant advantage in accuracy for participants with any amount of college education, and a significant interaction between the stimulus type (infographics compared to documents) and the condition (searching versus recall) with infographics being related to increased performance in the searching task and not the recall tasks. However, there were no significant memory-related advantages for infographics above documents, and no interaction between education and stimulus type.

Different approaches used to define how a website shows information have an impact on how users evaluate its usability. As shown in the present study, how people accomplish a search of visual content in a newspaper website is an important factor to review while designing it. In this study, 47 participants were randomly assigned to evaluate one of two different newspaper websites and asked to do visual and written searches. The evaluation metrics were: task success and task time. Also the participants made an overall evaluation of the site, answering two Likert questions and an open-ended question to measure qualitative aspects. Finally, we measured the overall satisfaction with a SUS questionnaire. The results show that a poor performance in the search of visual content lead to lower usability perception, this might be a main aspect to improve when defining priorities to enhance overall usability.

Screen magnifiers, which often result in the need for horizontal scrolling, and enlarging content through the browser itself are two magnification methods used by computer-users with low vision. With responsive web design (RWD), the later can be done with word wrapping, thus eliminating the need to horizontally scroll. The present study compared the effectiveness of the two methods when participants performed two types of Web-based tasks: reading comprehension and data input. Results showed that when using RWD, participants completed the reading comprehension tasks more quickly and accurately compared to when using screen magnifiers. Participants were also able to complete data input more quickly with RWD than with the screen magnifier. Finally, participants rated RWD to be more usable than screen magnifiers. The results of this study have implications for further developments of web accessibility guidelines.

Vast quantities of video data are now widely available and easily accessible; because of the many videos that users encounter, video summary technology is needed in order to help users find videos that match their preferences. This study focuses on movies to propose a method for extracting important scenes based on visual and sound information, and verifies the degree of harmony of the extracted scenes. The video segments thus characterized can be used to generate summary videos.

How does screen size impact users in ways other than task performance or efficiency? The current study proposed and tested the hypothesis that a narrower conceptual scope was associated with the small/App than the large/web store interface leading to reduced ad relevance effect (i.e., evaluation of the ad and advertised products in high than low relevance ads was more positive). The hypothesis was supported. Implications for mobile shopping behavior and online ad placement were also discussed.

The study aimed at exploring rich heritage of cultural symbols in Nigeria for meaningful and harmonious adaptations in web visual interface design. In this study, we focused on developing theme design for computer-based questionnaire form using selected cultural motifs from the Yoruba traditional textile tradition as a source of inspiration. Visual aesthetic evaluations were done by university students in south western Nigeria using semantic differential scales. We assessed the perceived aesthetic impression of the stimuli set through the main test procedure. The study reveals how the inflection and transfiguration of cultural symbols in web visual design can be visually appealing to the local computer users at a first glance and changes that might occur over extended exposure time. This paper underscores the relevance of cultural potentials from Nigerian heritage for modern day design application by using information technology as a platform towards adapting them.

A method is presented for generating informative and natural-sounding infotips for graphical elements of a user interface. A domain-specific corpus is prepared using natural language processing techniques, and a term-frequency/inverse-document-frequency transform is used for vectorization of features. A

k

-means algorithm is then used to cluster the corpus by semantic similarity and retrieve the most similar infotips for any inputted interface label. We demonstrate the feasibility of this method and conclude by proposing several approaches to improve the selection of infotips by incorporating natural language processing and machine learning techniques.

In recent years, research on lifelogging has increased because of developments in information technology. However, few studies have dealt with communication with other people using lifelogging technology. Therefore, we have developed the BlogWear system, which automatically generates weblog entries using lifelog data. The results of our previous experiment showed that a large number of entries from lifelog data have few changes, and readers quickly tire of them. Therefore, this study proposes a method that generates a four-frame cartoon expression from lifelog data. The contribution of this study is to show that the use of four-frame cartoon expressions can make viewing lifelog data more enjoyable.

With the rapid growth of mobile devices, mobile websites become an important channel of library resources and services. The mobile catalog is often significantly different from its desktop version in interface and features, but few studies of library catalog search behavior have been focused on mobile catalog searches. We present a study on user search behavior with a mobile library catalog based on transaction log analysis. We compared mobile and desktop catalog search behaviors and highlighted the similarities and differences, which could provide important evidence for improving mobile library catalogs’ search performance and usability.

A central challenge for any approach to mining multimedia data concerns the availability of a

unified

semantics that allows for the

fusion

of multicodal information objects. To meet this challenge, a format is needed that enables the representation of multimedia data even across the border of different (e.g. iconic and symbolic) codes using the

same

ontology. In this paper, we introduce the

OWLnotator

as a first step to meeting this dual challenge by example of text-image relations. The

OWLnotator

is presented as part of the

eHumanities Desktop

, a browser-based, platform-independent environment for the support of collaborative research in the digital humanities. It focuses on modeling and analyzing multicodal, multimedia information objects as studied in the humanities. The eHumanities Desktop contains a wide range of tools for managing, analyzing and sharing resources based on a scalable concept of access permissions. Within this framework, we introduce the

OWLnotator

as a tool for annotating intra- and intermedia relations of artworks. The OWLnotator allows for modeling relations of symbolic and iconic signs of various levels of resolution: ranging from the level of elementary constituents to the one of complete texts and images. To this end, the

OWLnotator

integrates

TEILex

(a system for interrelating corpus and lexicon data as part of the eHumanities Desktop) with the expressiveness of

OWL

-based ontologies in order to meet the first part of our twofold challenge. As an evaluation, we illustrate the

OWLnotator

by means of “

Illustrations of Goethes Faust

”.

Most Web browsers have a Web history function to support to go back to the pages which user use to watch. However, only few people use it to revisit Web pages. In this study, we suggest a filtering system of Web history that holds only the Web pages that is more likely to be revisited. Whether visited Web pages are more likely to be revisited or not is determined by the characteristics of user’s browsing behaviors. Our results clarify users’ browsing characteristics make a filtering system of Web history work well. This study shows a solution of revisit Web pages, using Web history function.

The World Wide Web has been rapidly developing in the last decade. In recent years, the Semantic Web has gained a lot of traction. It is a vision of the Web where data is understandable by machines as well as humans. Developments in the Semantic Web made way for the creation of massive knowledge bases containing a wealth of structured information. However, allowing end-users to interact with and benefit from these knowledge bases remains a challenge.

In this paper, we present

Seed

, an extensible knowledge-supported natural language text composition tool, which provides a user-friendly way of interacting with complex knowledge systems. It is integrable not only with public knowledge bases on the Semantic Web, but also with private knowledge bases used in personal or enterprise contexts.

By means of a long-term formative user-study and a short-term user evaluation of a sizable population of test subjects, we show that

Seed

was successfully used in exploring, modifying and creating the content of complex knowledge bases. We show it enables end-users do so with nearly no domain knowledge while hiding the complexity of the underlying knowledge representation.

This paper presents the preliminary results of a cognitive ethnography of the personal information management (PIM) practices of five social science researchers. Based on video-recorded interviews involving guided tours of our informants’ personal digital spaces of information, we study how they create digital workspaces that support their informational activity. We introduce a semio-cognitive theoretical framework to elucidate the relationships between the users’ informational activity, the technical and semiotic properties of the software tools they use, and their conceptual models of these tools. Based on this framework, our analyses of PIM practices highlight how conceptual models play a mediation role between the affordances of the tools and the activities that they support.

As complexity increases in commons-based peer production communities, the means of organizing and facilitating collective action must also mature to ensure the ongoing health and active maintenance of those communities [

1

]. This study examines the types of structured data that exist in Wikipedia, introduces an argument for an extension to the types of structured and semi-structured data within Wikipedia supported by that descriptive analysis; and presents an implementation of that extension that supports instantiations of semi-structured content that facilitate both human and tool-mediated interactions with Wikipedia data. This extension offers a novel means of structuring data to support the ongoing health and maintenance of online communities like the community of editors that maintain and develop Wikipedia.

The text document classification employs either text based approach or semantic based approach to index and retrieve text documents. The former uses keywords and therefore provides limited capabilities to capture and exploit the conceptualization involved in user information needs and content meanings. The latter aims to solve these limitations using content meanings, rather than keywords. More formally, the semantic based approach uses the domain ontology to exploit the content meanings of a particular domain. This approach however has some drawbacks. It lacks enrichment of ontology concepts with new lexical resources and evaluation of the importance indicated by weights of those concepts. Therefore to address these issues, this paper proposes a new ontology based text document classification framework. The proposed framework incorporates a newly developed objective metric calledSEMCON to enrich the domain ontology with new concepts by combining contextual as well as semantic information of a term within a text document. The framework also introduces a new approach to automatically estimate the importance of ontology concepts which is indicated by the weights of these concepts, and to enhance the concept vector space model using automatically estimated weights.

We introduce a new information architecture that is a synthesis of an information structure, information flow (e.g. narrative), and information dialectic (its evolution). Insights from the memory mnemonic the

method of loci

and the philosophical process of

dialectic

are introduced. Three cumulative syntheses are presented: the organic architecture with (1) the hierarchical architecture with (2) the sequential architecture with (3) the dialectical method.

Increasing robotic capabilities and a strong impetus for mixed-initiative Soldier-Robot teaming is pushing the boundaries of current communication paradigms. These future teams are expected to perform along a continuum of operating environments, in which traditional auditory and visual modalities may be hindered or unavailable. The tactile modality offers an alternative means for a robot to communicate words, phrases, or cues to a Soldier, providing an additional channel to facilitate more robust multimodal communications. However, fundamental research is still needed to understand how to design tactile icons called “tactons.” In order to better understand the relationship of a tacton and their assigned names, this paper presents results from an experiment comparing the ability of participants to classify existing tactons from the literature using original versus nonsense-syllable labels.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a dual-row tactile belt comprising two different types of advanced tactors to communicate both navigation information and incoming alerts, during a waypoint navigation night operations scenario. Navigation information was provided to the Soldier by providing a pulse pattern on the torso corresponding to the direction towards the next waypoint. At the same time, the Soldier received incoming situation awareness alerts regarding threat and robot status indicators. Each Soldier participated in two comparable navigation scenarios, where the task performance with a front-mounted visual map display was used. A tactile assisted interface was also part of the Soldier ensemble, such that the tactile system was turned on during one navigation scenario, and turned off for the other. When using the tactile system, Soldiers reported being more situationally aware of their surroundings and having better control of their weapon. They also navigated more quickly, and very rarely consulted their visual dispay, when the tactile system was turned on.

Multisensory information processing is a basic feature of neural systems and has been exploited to facilitate development of Army systems that augment Soldier performance through multisensory displays. However, the full potential of these systems has yet to be determined and will require understanding fundamental features of the underlying neurophysiology of multisensory processing, the neuroergonomics of multisensory machine interface and analytical methods for neural signal analysis, dimensionality reduction and pattern recognition. Here, findings from basic and applied research efforts will be presented that have focused on various aspects of human (brain)-computer interfaces to uncover understanding in these areas and mediate recent technological developments in multisensory display technology, passive mental state detection, attention/orientation detection, and human activities recognition from video in general. Based on the knowledge of multisensory processes acquired from these efforts there are emerging opportunities for creating new human gesture-controlled recognition systems based upon multimodal data analysis which will allow for unprecedented human-machine symbiosis.

Optical illusions, such as the optimized FraserWilcox figures, are perceived to be moving although they are perfectly still. Optical illusion intensity substantially increases in a color-dependent FraserWilcox figure vibrated at several Hz. By contrast, the intensity decreases in other types of optical illusion subjected to vibration. It is difficult to control the frequency and amplitude of vibration made by hand precisely. Vibrating a figure on the PC display by software may be affected by the response time and limited refresh rate of the PC display. Therefore, we developed a vibration equipment by using a positive mechanical constraint cam. Various optical illusion figures were vibrated using the equipment to determine the relationship of optical illusion strength to the amplitude and frequency of vibration. Results showed that the proposed equipment can effectively determine the vibration frequency and stroke in which optical illusions can be recognized.

In this paper, we give the way to make the sitting user feel the walking sensation, by using the walking sensation presenting device in which we put the data we got from measuring walking behavior. We measured walking behavior from the inertial sensors which we put on the insteps and waist of the pedestrian and pressure sensors on the bottoms of their feet. We get the data of back-&-forth movements of feet from the data of acceleration and directions from inertial sensors on insteps. In the same way, we get back-&-forth and left-and-right movements of the whole body from the sensor on back. Walking sensation presenting device has a chair for user to ride, which moves back-&-forth and right-&-left to presents walking body’s swing to user and the device which presents walking sensation to user’s lower limb. The device which presents walking sensation to user’s lower limb consists two parts. One part are the lower limb movement presenting board that moves back-&-forth to make user’s lower limbs do the same movement as the real walking. The other is the landing vibration presenting device. About 10 % of amount of the whole body movement in real walking presents the best walking sensation to the user. About 20 % of amount of the lower limb movement in real walking presents the best walking sensation to the user.

The purpose of this study was to induce different states using a vibration stimulus based on an individual’s breathing cycle. Based on the results of Lorenz plot area S (LP-area-S), breathing control with the long-period breathing pattern was able to induce a state of increased parasympathetic activity. Parasympathetic activity was greatly reduced during the task with the short-period breathing pattern. The results of LP-area-S and the AAC (alpha attenuation coefficient) showed that LP-area-S was increased with the short- and long-period breathing patterns when AAC was decreasing. Given the results of this experiment, it appears that breathing control using a vibration stimulus based on individual breathing cycles can lead to a relaxed state in terms of the physiological and psychological changes.

In our previous study, the requirements for designing memorable vibration patterns such as a rhythmical vibration pattern called “vibration rhythm” were proposed. However, almost all participants, regardless of their age, could only recognize a few vibration patterns. Therefore, we attempted to determine a method to create memorable vibration patterns that enabled the users to understand the meaning of the many vibration patterns presented. In this study, a method, designing the vibration patterns with language rhythms implied the Japanese pronunciation of the corresponding message, were tried. The method was evaluated through experiments, and its validity was verified by comparing its results with a working memory system proposed by Baddeley. From the results, we concluded that the method can help the user improve his learning skills and memory. Consequently, our proposed new method is a better option to create memorable vibration patterns.

As an interface for calling attention without noticing others, presentation of tactile thermal information, equipped with an input device was evaluated. The thermal presentation device was designed such that emotional changes were generated after the exposure of the warm and cold stimuli, which may lead to the alarm effect. The experiment was conducted to examine physiological and behavioral responses for the thermal stimuli by measuring reaction time to the stimuli with heart rate variability. The results revealed that the reaction times given by cold stimuli were shorter than those by warm stimuli although the changes in R-R interval of heart rate decreased significantly only by the presentation of warm stimuli. Further evaluation included the usability for the effects associated with alarm and recovery of drowsy situations.

When a new technology is contemplated to enhance situation awareness (SA), thought must be given to designing, prototyping, and demonstrating it to enhance usability and acceptance. The focus during this process is typically upon the end-user. We introduce three SA-enhancing displays (designed to avoid spatial disorientation (SD), falling, and collisions, respectively) and describe the typical end-users of such displays. We then argue for a wider consideration of human factors (HF) that includes the needs of those in the entire human chain of technology development before the final end-users. We intend to show how solving problems associated with the early development and refinement of new technologies requires a consideration of multiple types of “users”. Consideration of only the end-user is not sufficient to ensure technology acceptance in any of the three case studies described in this report. Everyone in the chain of technology development must be considered a user.

We have developed a real-time Eye Glance input interface using a Web camera to capture eye gaze inputs. In previous studies, an eye control input interface was developed using an electro-oculograph (EOG) amplified by AC coupling. Our proposed Eye Gesture input interface used a combination of eye movements and did not require the restriction of head movement, unlike conventional eye gaze input methods. However, this method required an input start operation before capturing could commence. This led us to propose the Eye Glance input method that uses a combination of contradirectional eye movements as inputs and avoids the need for start operations. This method required the use of electrodes, which were uncomfortable to attach. The interface was therefore changed to a camera that used facial pictures to record eye movements to realize an improved noncontact and low-restraint interface. The Eye Glance input method measures the directional movement and time required by the eye to move a specified distance using optical flow with OpenCV from Intel. In this study, we analyzed the waveform obtained from eye movements using a purpose-built detection algorithm. In addition, we examined the reasons for detecting a waveform when eye movements failed.

Emotion has closely relationship with one’s body image. In some cases, external object that physically separates from body is recognized as one’s body image. In other words, the body image extends to the external object. This phenomenon happens by integration of internal sense that perceives one’s body and external sense that perceives the outside of the body. On the other hand, the type of evoked emotion is decided from cognizing not only body image but also attribution of causality. General approaches to evoke emotion in recent have not discussed the causal attribution in depth. This study has proposed a new method for evoking emotions through touching upon the discussion of causal attribution. To investigate the feasibility of our approach, we made “Interactonia Balloon” that lets users evoke a tense feeling by coupling and decoupling a change in respiratory condition and a movement of a balloon. In this paper, we report on the feedback and implications obtained through the exhibition of this work.

Cognitive demands on dismounted Soldiers are ever increasing. This is an investigation into using gestural controls and a tactile display vest to reduce cognitive, physical, and temporal demands as relevant to covert communications and robot control. Data was collected on 31 Soldiers for this experiment-based evaluation consisting of task demands of a typical rural reconnaissance patrol deconstructed into specific tasks involving a platoon leader role, a squad leader role, and a robot controller role. Results found that use of an instrumented glove and a tactile display vest was associated with a higher average percentage and faster average speed of signal detections when compared to traditional hand and arm signals. Glove-based robot control was also compared with traditional methods and evaluated.

In car, information presented to drivers is increasing and most of information is done using the visual and auditory displays. Presenting the information only to visual and auditory modes must cause drivers’ cognitive overloads in the near future and it is necessary to find the way using other modes to reduce them. In this study, we especially focus on human tactile figure recognition of the train of sticking stimuli and examine the human characteristics of what kinds of figures people can recognize as the tactile feedback. We developed tactile device that expresses four figures. We found there are interactions between the interval time of each sticking and the figures and human has quite different mechanisms between the cases of the simultaneous sticking and the consecutive sticking in recognizing the figures.

This paper proposes a system for users of “general paper media (newspaper, books, publications, etc.)” using recognition of written cues (made by handwritten entries) and performing digital processing. Users are able to use this system by a smartphone and on paper-media to save a favorite paragraph or image on the paper, illustrate data associations, and search for English translations, all the while being able to use the paper-media in a natural way. Moreover, users are able to browse the interaction logs from both the paper-media and smartphone. Experiments to evaluate the performance of this system shows the high recognition accuracy, and high discrimination accuracy depending on written cues.

The operating tool is not mentioned for the case of a location cannot be directly confirmed visually. In above cases, by that people touch the operation tools at our fingertips, its direction can be confirmed. This paper was focused onto the touch, in other words, tactile and haptic. When the operator touches the operation device, for example, button, switch, etc. It is possible to understand of the direction of its movement of machine (equipment) from texture information of device obtained from the operation of the tactile device. From this, when performing multiple operations at the same time, and also the working conditions it is difficult to be confirmed an operation device in the eye, it is to aim to reduce operation errors. The experimental study was done. Tow impression are found as follows; the raise-get down and positive rotation – negative rotation. It has been proven that there is an association between directionality and textural sense of materials.

The two types of illuminations were developed as security sensing with motion sensor instead of the image. We focused on the lights in outdoor in this study. As the role of outdoor lights, the proposed light has a function that feels natural presence of residents and pedestrian light as illumination. We examined about a new style of lighting and proposed the lighting which combined functionality of street light and outdoor light. We conducted concept planning, prototyping, experiments for determining flash lighting and evaluation, and proposed two design models. The proposed lightings in this study were able to provide a solution by data and sensing, and to achieve safety and security.

Route-planning is a perplexing problem in the field of computer science. Finding computationally viable solutions to route-planning is a challenging task. Various techniques have been devised to solve this problem; however, there is a trade-off in these techniques between computational complexity and accuracy. One paradigm defined in artificial intelligence which can contribute to this problem’s solution is a multi-agent system, in which a group of agents work together to achieve a common goal. These agents require a robust mechanism for coordination and information exchange in order to achieve this goal. When applied to route-planning, these agents interact to compute the optimal path based on distance, speed, and a variety of environmental factors that may impact travelling time. The consideration of these factors allows a solution generated by the system to be applicable to real world sitations. In this work, a hybrid model is proposed which utilizes a multi-agent system to compute travelling time for a given route. This system utilizes a Bayesian network to model interdependencies which exist between environmental factors. In order to illustrate the potential effectiveness of the proposed model, several case studies from the state of Alabama are presented.

The purpose of this study is to improve the healthcare service in nursing home base on customer desire. Previous studies found that Taiwan nowadays is facing the rapid growth of the ageing population and lack of resources for taking care of elderly. Nursing home has become one of solutions to overcome these issues. However the current condition indicates that some nursing homes can not satisfy the customer desires, especially for elderly who are more sensitive. SERVQUAL model is used to measure the service quality base on the gap score between customer expectation and perception. Kano model is used to categorized and prioritize each service attributes according the degree of influence toward customer satisfaction. The findings of a case study are presented.

In this article, we propose a travel-information sharing system. Internet-based travel-advisory services have been widely used, and these sites allow users to search and garner information regarding tourist destinations more easily. However, with such services it is difficult to find live information about a particular location, including route information, owing to the quantity of information posted on the Web.

This research focuses on diabetic patients who undergo multiple daily injections therapy (MDI) for their diabetic management. MDI therapy is usually considered challenging and difficult to maintain. For this reason, patients might not able to maintain a good level of adherence to the insulin medication. As a step to improve the adherence level among diabetics, we would like to propose a reminder system that can promote a change in the patients’ behavior. This paper is divided into two scopes: the first scope concerns the evaluation of current technologies within diabetic management; while the second scope focuses on testing the proposed system among a number of patients. The results from this usability study demonstrated that there was some improvement within the adherence level among participants. We concluded that these types of systems have the potential to ease the diabetic management and improve the adherence to insulin medication.

In this paper, a concept is presented that allows to deploy a unified wireless network access for all employees in organizations with heterogeneous network environments. It is designed to be easy to implement and to maintain. Also, it focuses on usability, removing the need for manual actions to obtain network access when roaming between locations. The concept has been tested in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, and has proven to solve its requirements. It can be deployed with only a small team thanks to the reduced complexity in the branch locations, and it can also be maintained without much effort since ongoing manual tasks have been avoided. Since it is based on open standards, it can easily be customized to match the requirements of the individual organization, or be extended with future improvements. For research and education organizations it is particularly useful that this concept can be integrated with eduroam seamlessly. This allows not only the own employees to roam between locations, but also guests from other participating institutions.

In terminal care, patients may not receive the treatment they want because they cannot express their will. We found that the “Advance Directive” and the “Living Will” are useful for determining the treatment in terminal care. However, patients being unable to respond to changes due to self-choices and share these self-choices when using a conventional format are some problems that remain. We propose an advance care planning support system that enhances the possibility of performing self-choices, collecting data about end-of-life care, confirming self-choices, and sharing the information with others using social networks.

The appealing points of a product are not only “good function” and “easy to use”, but also “lovely form” for a consumer. Especially it is true for a window shopping or an internet shopping. Many studies have shown that a product looked lovely is more welcomed. If product features made products looked lovely are analyzed and singled out, product designers can easily apply them in the concept development stage. This study was conducted by two phases: a questionnaire survey and a feature analysis of product that looked lovelier. This paper concludes several important findings which are: 1. A structure scale for measuring form features is established. 2. The form features of the loveliest products, the form features of lovelier product between male and female, and the form features of lovelier product among different age groups are identified.

Many conventional guidance systems utilize words and signals that need to be recorded by humans. However, these systems have the disadvantage of going unnoticed or being too intrusive when used in quiet places, such as a museum. Human behavior is known to change as a result of varying feelings and ambient sounds elicit pleasant and unpleasant feelings. We therefore hypothesized that creating a comfortable sound field at a particular location would induce human behavior. To induce human behavior with sound, we constructed a system that divides space without a physical barrier by focusing sound in a narrow area. Using this system, we examined the possibility of generating an acoustic field in a narrow target position and measured the output accuracy of the presented acoustic pressure. In addition, we tested whether humans were unconsciously guided by the effects of this system.

User segmentation is a practice of clustering an audience based on mutually exclusive subsets of individuals that are similar in specific ways. Nowadays user segmentation is crucial not only for the industry but also for the field of User Centered Design, where achieving an accurate understanding of the user’s behavior in the current e-scenario is becoming a complex task. The segmentation could be based on demographic issues, social-economical features, psychographic data, physical characteristics and psychological profiles, etc. This paper proposes a novel strategy for the automatic detection of critical segmentation factors that divide users focused on their feelings and opinions towards a particular topic. Given a topic and on the basis of user’s text-based opinions posted at Web 2.0 services (such as social networks, microblogging platforms, online review systems, online news media, etc.), our proposal introduces an argument-oriented methodology that integrates argumentation theory, sentiment analysis and opinion mining including the computational treatment of incomplete, contradictory or potentially inconsistent information. The mining process is characterized in terms of dialectical analysis of opinions (atomic or more complex opinions constructed by an aggregation mechanism) according to a preference criterion given by topic and feature specificity. As a result, an “opinion analysis tree” rooted in the first original topic is automatically constructed and visualized, in which any node models a user segmentation, showing the factor that define the segmentation as well as the particularities that group the subset. This way, traditional problems associated with the subjective interpretation of user’s opinions expressed in natural language are minimized. Besides, instead of defining a user’s statistical sample, all available information is considered and possible, not evident critical segmentation factors could be discovered, thus enhancing a rational decision making process.

How do participants respond to and prefer either a common voice agent that follows them across platforms or a community of specialist agents connected to specific hardware platform. This study examines users’ gender as it relates to preference for voice-control system (VCS). The participants experiences a VCS agent that followed them across platforms such as from a smart pone to a personal cloud computing (PCC) or smart TV. One group met a different specialist agents that were tied to different devices. This study pits the effect of specialization by interface against the principle of consistency design principle with regards to voice agents. However, we found a strong gender effect, females preferred a single, generalist female agent across platforms while males tended to prefer different, specialist female agents embodying different platform.

With the development of communication technology, smartphone becomes an important personnel device that everyone must have. As the introduction of 3

rd

Generation mobile telecommunication, the technology of touch screen was started to be applied on the mobile phones and an indispensable component on a 3G smartphone that is built in advanced computing capability like digital cameras, GPS and web-browser. Most of modern smartphones include high-resolution touchscreens for display and control and the size of touchscreen becomes larger and larger. However, the question is that a larger screen is convenient to every user? The aim of this study is to realize the relationship between touchscreen sizes of smartphones and user’s relative hand dimensions based on the operation time, operation error rate and subjective thumb fatigue. One hundred subjects, including 50 males and 50 females were invited to attend the experiment. The experiment design includes 4 touchscreen sizes. The hand length and hand width were both divided into 4 categories respectively. The results indicated there is a rapid increasing trend from 3.5 in. screen to 5.7 in. screen for smaller hand length/width and the trend decreases firstly slight and then increases for large hand length/width. Touchscreen size from 4.6 in. to 5.0 in. is suggested for most people because this interval of screen size is relatively suitable based on the analysis of hand dimensions and 3 performance evaluation indices. Too large touchscreen (5.7 in.) is hard to use for any hand length or width.

Digital assets are produced in large scale by technology users, especially after the advent of the Internet. This paper aims to analyze Brazilian users’ experience with

Google Inactive Accounts

, under technical, legal and cultural perspectives. Regarding legal aspects, Brazilian laws are still inceptive. Some projects are being designed or analyzed by governmental institutions, and the right to oblivion is one of the main controversial points. The experiment was part of an exploratory research by means of questionnaires, which were answered by web software engineers, who are users of that application too. The answers were organized into four main categories: (a) inheritance rights; (b) the Right to be Forgotten; (c) temporal contact information; and (d) technical stalemates. All those data were analyzed according to a literature review on technical and legal issues regarding death, legacy and technology, so as to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of the options provided by

Google Inactive Accounts

.

Purchasing style of Japanese consumers have made their own development. Purchase of goods with a large amount once a month or once a few weeks is a kind of global standard. On the contrary, purchase of goods with a small amount once in couple of days is common in purchasing style of Japanese consumers. Purchase of goods with a large amount in a weekend is recently getting to increase however the interval is a week at the longest.

Japanese supermarkets have various features to respond to such a unique purchasing style. First, in the rest of the world, stores are located in the extensive sites on the suburbs but, in Japan, stores are located in the town. Secondly, Japanese supermarkets handle a small amount of products which are subdivided. Furthermore, even if in the same category, supermarkets handle different kinds of products by different manufacturers. In this way, purchasing style of Japanese consumers have made their own development.

The analysis was carried out using the purchasing data of all customers who visited stores and distribution data of members-only coupon.

As the analysis, the authors have found that member registration rate of customers is very high. Its registration rate is as high as 70 %. Also, utilization rate of the coupons as member’s privileges is low and, when the members pay in the stores, 70 % of them don’t use the coupons.

In future task, how to analyze the member information which is not customer information.

The main aim of this paper is to investigate whether our augmented reality (AR) system (which changes the appearance of a cup) can implicitly change individuals’ beverage consumption via affecting volume perception for long periods. Recent studies have revealed that the consumption of food and beverages is influenced by both their actual volume and external factors during eating and drinking. Previous research has confirmed that the apparent height of the cup is a vital factor in changing drinking behavior with regard to one sip. Therefore, in this paper, we conducted a user study to confirm whether our AR system can change drinking behavior and beverage consumption and whether the effect can be sustained over the course of one hour. The results showed that the total amount of beverage consumed in one hour can be changed from about –14 % to about 25 % compared to normal. By comparing this result and that of previous research, we showed that the total beverage consumption in one hour is proportional to the amount consumed in one mouthful, and the effect of our method on changing the total beverage consumption continues over the course of one hour.

The Next Generation Air Transportation (NextGen) system will introduce new automation tools to help air traffic controllers manage the projected increase in air traffic. As automation tools are gradually implemented, there will be a period of time where some air traffic will be managed with traditional voice-based tools and others will be managed with automation tools. The present study examined whether ATCo students prefer to use voice or Datalink more often to solve conflicts, and determine if there were any situations where Datalink was particularly beneficial to students. The present study is an archival analysis of data collected from 50 student ATCos who took part in one of four semesters of an ATCo training internship offered by the Center for Human Factors in Advanced Aeronautics Technologies (CHAAT). We found that students were more likely to use Datalink to resolve conflicts during the midterm than at the final, suggesting early reliance on tools during learning. However, at the final exam, students used voice and Datalink equally often, and indicated that they preferred voice over Datalink. The preference for voice is likely due to it being a more efficient method of controller-pilot communication than Datalink.

In Japan, cube puzzle toys are traditionally made of jointed wood. This paper explores the personal decision-making process necessary to correctly assemble a cube puzzle toy. Participants from Iwate Prefecture were divided into two groups, based on a questionnaire that assessed their skill level in assembling construction kits. The participants were presented with an unassembled toy and their actions, together with all of the conditions necessary for interpretation of the puzzle, were recorded with a VDO camera. As a result of the observations, new variables were developed to create three cube puzzle sets and customize the difficulty level associated with each puzzle. Furthermore, new information about how people define shapes was revealed during the observational stage of the study.

With the popularity of LTE technology, the mobile industry is booming and the market size of the mobile industry is expanding. The major Internet companies have entered the mobile gaming market, resulting in an increasingly competitive market. Under this background, mobile games have then become an emerging market in online game industry in the past few years. The scholars studying mobile games are focused on the technology development level, few studies on consumer behavior. The paper study is behavior intention of mobile games based on Customer Perceived Value. The research results in this paper have practical meaning for mobile game developers and operators. Through the use of Customer Perceived Value, analyze the behavior features of Chinese and Japanese users. Then they can enhance customer satisfaction and customer loyalty by properly managing Customer Perceived Value.