HCI International 2019 – Late Breaking Papers

For several decades there has been continuous growth in the field of robotics, with recent trends driving towards a vision of humans collaborating in a cohesive unit with automated counterparts. Enabling true mixed-initiative teaming between a human and robot will require communication capabilities and cognition comparable to human teammates. Multimodal communication is a framework in which interfaces can be created supporting the flexible selection of different modalities (e.g. speech, gestures) for these transactions. A major challenge for human factors researchers investigating human robot collaboration with multimodal interfaces is the current limitations of robots. Therefore, simulations and wizard-of-oz type experiments are heavily employed to measure performance, workload, and other factors in future mixed-initiative scenarios. Although these techniques facilitate experimentation, it can be difficult to transition findings to working prototypes of today’s robots. For example, a researcher finds an effective way to convey a robots decision making rationale in a simulation-based study, but has no working robot that can drive the content in reality. Furthermore, the literature regarding multimodal communication with robots applied to the military domain is limited. For example, evaluation of different modalities as part of an interrupting task has been explored in driving scenarios, but not between robot(s) and soldiers. In many cases there is conflict in findings across domains. To address this challenge, this paper describes how a multimodal interface for a real robotic platform developed under the U.S. Army Research Labs Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (RCTA) was extended to support standalone simulation of interactions and integration with simulated virtual environments. This functionality enables researchers to assess new interaction techniques using the same software that will interact with a real platform to facilitate transition of their research. Furthermore, experiment design approaches including theory-based tasks in a military relevant mission (Cordon and Search) are discussed.

Over the past several decades, accessibility has been increasingly pervading a vast range of fields, producing a large number of new ideas, theories, and innovations that have already proven to be quite fruitful. A closer look at how accessibility has entered and developed in various research fields shows that said fields have experienced fundamental changes: a shift from particularist accounts to a universalist account of access, a shift from maker-centred to user-centred approaches, and a shift from reactive to proactive approaches. Through these processes, accessibility has birthed new areas within those fields, that have been gradually converging to constitute the wider field of accessibility studies. The nature and position of accessibility studies has now become a central topic. This ongoing progression of conceptual clarification may bear some misunderstanding and misinterpretations along the way. In the paper, I first briefly review the principal traits of the process of formation of accessibility studies; then address some possible misconceptions; and finally, introduce a first, very general sketch of poietic design, a method proper to accessibility studies.

Ambient media advertising is an innovative outdoor advertising format. This type of advertising typically involves placing unexpected advertisements in unusual locations to draw the attention of consumers and leave a memorable impression on consumers. Ambient media advertisements are often integrated into daily surroundings, and these novel advertisements make consumers’ daily lives more fun and creative. Unexpected ambient media advertisements draw consumers’ attention, provoke their positive attitudes toward the advertisement, and increase purchase intentions and revenues.Ambient media advertisements that attract people’s attention often employ unique media to convey messages, and different presentation designs are applied to incorporate novel and unpredictable factors in the visual display to stimulate the audiences’ interests in advertisement messages. For this study, 238 advertisement samples were acquired from the website Bored Panda Ambient Media. After experts eliminated similar samples, a total of 190 ambient media advertisement samples were adopted for this research. By analyzing these samples, five design techniques (i.e., metaphor, similes, allegory, metonymy, and analogy) and three media (i.e., site media, reproducing media, and mechanical media) were identified, and a total of 15 ambient media advertisement sample combinations were obtained. The differences in the message comprehension level were then determined among these samples. The results are as follows: (1) Among various media with all design techniques, site media resulted in the highest message comprehension. (2) Among all design techniques under various media, the technique of metaphor resulted in the highest message comprehension. (3) Regarding the effect of media and design technique interactions, the combination of metaphor and site media resulted in the highest message comprehension.

With the prosperous growing of intelligent technology, the automobile industry is developing towards an unmanned and intelligent generation. However, making a car drive in a human-like way is still a great challenge to engineers, which slows the adoption of such cars in a mass scale. Considering human perception capabilities during the design process might be a solution to this problem, and hazard perception is of great important. The aim of the study is to propose a theoretical framework for exploring the relationship between driving environment and human perceived hazards to give suggestions on designing human-like vehicle controllers. Correlating objective environmental factors with subjective hazard ratings. Human-in-the-loop experiments were carried out on a high-fidelity driving simulator. 27 driving scenarios were designed and implemented for 14 participants to acquire their subjective hazard ratings, while objective measurements were also recorded.Specifically, by using the proposed methodology hazard perception level of passenger can be measured by using the subjective parameters adopted during the experiment, which stands for the subjective assessment of passenger’s hazard perception. To find what dynamic parameters having a significant correlation with hazard perception level, a seven scale of subjective hazard perception was defined from –3 to 3, namely over dangerous, dangerous, a little dangerous, normal, a little cautious, cautious, overcautious. Objective measures of environment include the velocity and acceleration of the subjective car and the distance between the subjective car and obstacle. A 3*3*3 mixed ANOVA was carried out in our study in order to find out the correlation between the environment and subjective assessment. The finding shows us that the interaction of velocity and acceleration and distance has a strong correlation with the passenger’s hazard perception. The others show no correlation be-tween hazard perception assessment.This research is with great potential to improve the development of Advanced Driver Assistant System (ADAS) and intelligent automobile from a human perspective. The findings can also be applied to the design of vehicle controllers to improve the passenger’s comfort by knowing that on what condition or what kind of control the passenger will feel dangerous and uncomfortable.

This paper presents an industrial case of applying co-creation principles for the design of smart industry 4.0 solution within the context of three distinct end-user organizations ranging from aeronautics, robot and furniture manufacturing. The purpose was to develop a digital solution that monitors the operators and their environment to recognise the context and determine whether an operator requires support, subsequently triggering the most appropriate interventions for the operator to excel at their work whilst maintaining their well-being. The paper documents the process followed, results and lessons learnt in applying co-creation principles in the elicitation of requirements in human centered manufacturing work environments.

In this study, the relationship between color-vision types and impressions of color images was examined. Protan, deutan, and trichromatic color-vision participants evaluated the impressions of color images by employing the semantic differentials method, which comprised 13 adjective pairs. In the visual experiment, 20 color images were presented to 31 Japanese male participants, more specifically, 10 trichromatic, 10 protan, and 11 deutan color-vision participants. The experiment revealed that differences of color-vision resulted in different impressions for identical color images. Three factors, named activity, harmony, and potency were extracted from factor analysis. The factor scores were scattered in a three dimensional space on activity, harmony, and potency axes. Furthermore, the protan participants’ factor scores did not vary widely along the harmony axis; however, the impression differences sensed in the specific color images by protan and deutan participants were hard to distinguish by using protan and deutan color-vision simulating algorithms. The knowledge of the relationship between color-vision types and color impressions may enable us to develop a concept of a universal design that considers kansei differences.

In the recent years, design science has gained significant interest in the information systems development field. In the HCI research community it also proved to be an applicable and often used research framework for design and evaluation of user experience constructs. In this paper we presented the results of a systematic mapping study performed on more than 250 literature sources in order to obtain the information on which UX evaluation techniques are used by researches when performing design science research methodology in creation of UX related artifacts. The analysis resulted in 43 included papers which were classified in five relevant groups. Most of the included studies (21) reported the use different questionnaires in order to evaluate created UX artifacts. The keyword analysis showed that 32 different keywords were used when reporting the UX design and evaluation techniques.

The effectiveness of using websites have a strong dependence on their ergonomic qualities, which affect directly the business. This is more significant when related to the e-commerce, especially considering the little known companies. To verify ergonomic features in a website, the evaluator may conduct inspections based on questionnaires that are answered by him/her or by final users to provide information about the interface.In this paper, our goal was the development of an application that automatically generates ergonomic questionnaires to evaluate the usability of web sites. The main idea is to select specific questionnaires and specific questions that must be parameterized according to the users choice. Among these parameters, are the interaction elements present in the pages that compose the website, such as scroll bars, buttons, hyperlinks, windows, text fields and others.The analysis of the questionnaire responses, provides data to build better usability interfaces, resulting in less time and effort to achieve their goals, and thus, delivering positive results. These questionnaires and their responses can be stored in a database for future reference and may support new usability assessments.The tool was used by 22 evaluators. These users are aged between 19 and 30 years, and have some connection with the University of Sao Paulo. Correlations were also made between some questions to see if there was any relationship between them .

The vehicle has been gradually evolving from a traditional delivery vehicle into a complex human-computer interaction system. In view of the increasingly diverse human-computer interaction systems in today’s automobiles, the design of HMI (human-machine interact) is very important to driver’s safety.This paper presents a new human-machine interaction evaluation method from both objective and subjective perspective that combined with eye movement tracking, finger tracking, questionnaire and interview which can be used in vehicle design of HMI. It can provide theoretical basis for vehicle design of HMI. Different from other research, one hallmark of it is that this method could directly reflect the problems in HMI design by finger behavior data. Because fingers are the only part of the body that directly touch to the interface during manipulation. In this study, we tested a music selection function of vehicle HMI in domestic with a simple task and find some problems of interaction design.It is found that the number of steps to complete the task and the total distance of finger movement data can reflect the usability of the logical framework design of music function. The number of tentative steps and the manipulation time can reflect the steps in question and combined with eye movement data and video data can reflect the details of the problem.From the experimental results, it is seen that some problems in HMI design can be accurately identified by using new evaluation method. It also provides a theoretical basis for the improvement and design of HMI.

As 5G wireless communication technology is currently deployed, an increasing amount of data is available from mobile devices out in the field. Exploiting this data, also called system traces, recent investigations show the potential to improve the wireless modem design and performance using data-centric approaches. Such data-centric workflows are exploratory and iterative by nature. For instance, time pattern identification is performed by domain experts to derive assumptions on potential optimizations and these assumptions are continuously refined during multiple iterations of data collection, visualization and exploration. In this context, we propose three optimizations to increase the exploration speed in iterative data-centric workflows. First, we present a methodology based on persistent memoization in order to minimize the data processing duration when additional event sequences need to be extracted from a trace. We show that up to 84.5% of the event extraction time can be spared for a typical modem trace data set. Secondly, we present a novel entropy-based data interaction technique for visual exploration of event sequences and finally, a similarity measure to perform subsequence matching in order to assist the user when identifying frequent time patterns in a trace.

This paper discusses a prototype brainstorming tool designed for sensemaking in intelligence analysis and integrates multimodal input in an immersive environment that supports multiple users. This digital tool has been designed using structured analytic techniques already in use through analog methods in the intelligence analysis domain. We discuss an ongoing user study that presents preliminary findings for tool, and suggestions for future development.

In the present study, we developed a chatbot service termed ‘CiSA’ (Chatbot for International Students and Academics) to enable international students and academics to effectively acquire essential information regarding their academic and campus life. To investigate the pain points and needs of our target user group, user research consisting of interviews and surveys was conducted. Based on the key findings from qualitative analysis, the concept was further refined. A flowchart was constructed to illustrate the designed conversations, while the user interface components were determined to express the responses of the chatbot. The design was further prototyped using Google’s DialogFlow, and implemented in Facebook Messenger. Finally, the interviews with the target users were conducted to verify the effectiveness, satisfaction, and extensibility of the service. The outcome of this study provides a powerful way to support the facilitation of communication and social inclusion by using this conversational agent. Furthermore, by focusing on enhancing the accessibility, the research contributes towards the practical understanding of the investigation of its service design for chatbot aimed at inclusivity.

One type of decision-making processes, which is often applied, based on the similarity of situations and developments. This study examines some approaches to addressing the similarities of situations and developments, including structural similarity and descriptive similarity. Structural similarity and descriptive similarity have been linked in many ways. One of these ways is based on theorems proven in algebraic systems and universal algebra theories. The authors point out that in order to assess two sets of descriptive similarity, it is first necessary to make descriptions of both sets, which must consist of relevant statements. The application of descriptive similarity in the process of managing the development of public transport systems in small towns in Estonia and Ukraine is considered. The authors presented the algorithm of decision-making process’ method. The approach how to apply the descriptive similarity between Estonian small towns and their public transport systems, and the small town of Ostroh from Ukraine is proposed. Some concrete examples and derived preliminary conclusions is presented.

The following research proposes a web based, interactive data visualization of a large food dataset, with an aim to raise awareness of their nutritional value. The system consists of an automatic dimensionality reduction scheme, based on t-SNE algorithm, and an exploratory user interface based on dynamic views of the data. Our approach allows users to effectively compare and relate visual representations of nutritional value in both micro and macro levels. The communicativeness of the application was evaluated regarding user experience and the storytelling functionality. Results show that the participants experienced a shift in perception from one mainly focused on taste to one aware of nutritional aspects. Additionally, the results suggest that a narrative experience can be generated, along with an effective long-term engagement.

Confronting the complex community design challenges, we demonstrated a novel paradigm of addressing the complexity by leveraging Augmented Reality incorporating information visualizations and the CityScope tangible interface. We next deployed CityScope Shenzhen Bay (CSB) as a practical case to quantify the entrepreneurial vitality of the Bay Area community. CSB incorporates information visualization toolkits, tangible interface for the rapid community design together with the simulation matrix of the community performance, which creates a crowd-sourcing platform to engage diverse stakeholders into the design and decision-making process towards the complexity of establishing an entrepreneurial community.

In this paper, we propose a sentiment analysis model using machine learning for the support on decision-making in the process of job interviews. To do this, a characterization of the analysis of sentiments, job interviews and machine learning algorithms is first performed. Then, supervised machine learning with artificial neural networks is implemented in a prototype, due to the non-linear behavior described in the variables taken in the study and applying the Eye tracking technique. Finally, tests are carried out with people, in which, by asking questions of these, the involuntary movements of the pupil of the eye are analyzed, through the processing of a volume of data and the results of the ocular patterns are interpreted. Correlated with the questions of the test and with it, a final judgment is presented for the support of the decision making.

We introduce a toolkit for creating, editing, storing, sharing and broadcasting dynamic haptic media through current computing devices. Adapted from an audio-based infrastructure, our Stereohaptics toolkit uses off-the-shelf hardware components and available software tools to create various haptic interfaces and applications. Core of our toolkit is the Stereohaptics engine that processes inputs from embedded sensors and renders high definition haptic feedback on discrete actuator grids. We exploit sensory illusions in touch to generate the perception of objects and their motion on, around and through the user’s body and present psychophysical evidence of static and moving tactile illusions between two discretely spaced haptic actuators. The toolkit supports users to craft a variety of haptic effects on and across the body in a variety of grid configurations. We present design of the toolkit and its use in various activities and workshops. Our framework is easy-to-use and simple-to-adopt and can be applied to everyday handheld, wearable, augmented reality, virtual reality and extended reality applications.

In recent years, augmented reality (AR) is an extremely growing field in information technology, computer science, and computer engineering. Although there are many recent works that use augmented reality for different purposes, most of the existing works do not focus on reviewing recent augmented reality-based human-computer interaction applications regarding gesture-based interaction. Therefore, we focus on a different goal from them. In this paper, we study robust methodologies that researchers have recently achieved gesture-based interaction for using in augmented reality-based human-computer interaction (HCI) applications. To begin with, we explore the recognitions of hand gestures using augmented reality. Next, we explore the possibilities of utilizing augmented reality for gesture-based interaction. We also give a suggestion and present a future scenario for gesture-based interaction and augmented reality. We believe that this would help the interactions that humans would have with modern innovations in an integrated cross-disciplinary area in the near future of human-computer interaction.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a growing field, with great potential purposes in many different environments including public museums and galleries. This paper introduces the use of AR in a public museum that is designed to bridge museum visitors, especially preschoolers to art pieces installed in a public museum. In collaboration with the UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum, we created an Augmented Reality experience called the OTC (Object To Camera) to showcase one’s artwork through an augmented medium that shows the behind scenes of the art pieces. The experience was intended to have a more physical approach, to distinguish itself from other augmented reality experiences the user may have come into contact with. An observation was conducted as a field study with preschoolers at a community event held at the UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum and showed that interactive AR has potential applications in the museum to enhance the learning process.

Speaking of Augmented Reality (AR), it is about augmenting an actual world with some virtually generated digital information in order to make the combination of two worlds as seamless as possible. Creating seamless AR effects in real time is non-trivial, requiring interdisciplinary knowledge integration from many fields such as computer vision, signal processing, sensor network, internet of things (IoT), three-dimensional computer graphics, human-computer interaction, and hardware designs. Nevertheless, for the past two decades, it is computer vision that has dominated the field of AR. Hence, common forms of AR that most people are familiar with are about utilizing a hardware device with embedded camera(s) together with a software program powering by computer vision algorithms. Based on our first-hand experiences in AR researches and communities, this paper presents a new summary regarding the world of modern AR from the beginning of the 21st century until now. Our summary divides the modern AR into five major waves based on important trends happening both inside and outside research communities.

Existing computer games used to teach coding to students have certain shortcomings such as the use of icons that do not convert to actual text-based coding commands, and the fact that teachers cannot follow students’ progress in real time. In this study, we have improved upon existing coding games by developing a puzzle game based on coding and a web-based management system to observe the user’s learning status in real time and maximize the understanding of how elementary students learn to code. We analyzed the syntax of various coding languages for the school curriculum and provided a menu to convert icons into textual coding language. In addition, the game’s management system includes multiple types of tutoring, real-time analysis of user play data, and feedback. Following its application in regular elementary school software classes, we conducted a Likert scale survey. Students reported positive effects on understanding and showed an interest in coding. It is expected that this will contribute to quality improvement in software education by providing content with proven educational value by breaking away from simple learning-oriented coding games.

Music can be a powerful therapy for many conditions, including autism syndrome. Technology is usually intrinsically attractive for children with autism, who often interact with apps on tablets and smartphones. It can offer structured, repeatable, and coherent training tools, customizable according to the student’s need and preferences. Although many apps for rehabilitation of children with autism are available, only a few of them are accessible to students with autism spectrum disorder due to complex interaction environments, the high number of items, and inappropriate stimuli offered. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, no apps are available for teaching music to people with autism. The Suoniamo project aims to fill this gap by designing an accessible app for teaching piano playing to students with autism. Customization is a key feature when teaching persons with special needs, even more so if dealing with the complexity of the autism spectrum disorder. This paper describes a pilot test with four adolescents with autism, aimed at evaluating the usability of the Suoniamo app user interfaces for the piano keyboard in three different configurations.

Currently, HCI researchers focus on novel solutions that combine technology into children’s outdoor activities to address the modest decline in such experience. This research presents a novel AR game in which shadows from the outdoor environment are used as AR markers, to facilitate children’ motivation and engagement in outdoor exploration experience. Our prototype uses physical shadows as clues with a treasure hunting game mechanism to make a connection with children and their familiar outdoor environment. To evaluate our approach, we designed and implemented the game and then conducted a qualitative user study with children (n = 10) with our initial prototype in a kindergarten. Our striking findings suggest that the use of shadows from the outdoor environment as an AR maker has the potential to expand the approach to facilitate children’ engagement and motivation through their outdoor interaction experience.

Exploring chess players of different personalities, including the strengths and weaknesses of each remains an essential component in designing new chess applications. Research shows that virtual players play an essential role in helping researchers to explore chess personalities of different classes and playing styles. A virtual chess player is defined as a software simulation that mimics the playing style of a real chess player. The current study employs these players in investigating the personalities of three class-A players while competing against Garry Kasparov. Additionally, it examines the personality of Kasparov and how he performs while competing against the other class-A players. To this end, the study utilizes an experimental design to collect data from simulations of games between three class-A players against Kasparov. The class-A players range in their personalities: a player who prefers chess material, drawish, and a balanced player. The four players in the simulation are virtual humans that are programmed to represent real chess players. The findings reveal that the class-A chess players did not have the same performance. Likewise, the performance of Kasparov varied according to the opponent, although his opponents were from the same category.

Emotion has become an important part in games. The purpose of this paper is to find whether game elements could influence players emotion? Which elements in a game could evoke player emotions? Previous theories showed game elements could be classified into two layers: the underlying layer and the metaphorical layer. Moreover, aesthetics, narrative, social interaction, and players’ ability in games could be emotional triggers. In this paper, we performed a case study to compare the two versions of a game: Game for Peace and PUBG Mobile. By using NLPIR (Natural Language Processing & Information Retrieval) platform, we analyzed 149 reviews of the new version to estimate the influence of specific game elements on player experience and emotion. Our study showed that: (1) even the small change of game elements has potential to influence players experience and emotion. (2) both the metaphorical layer and the underlying layer play a significant role in evoking players’ emotion. (3) Without the change of core gameplay, the alteration in theme and a metaphorical layer could alter players experience and emotions.

Multimedia teaching has been widely applied in Universities, which has brought good effect and great convenience under human-computer interaction environment in teaching practice. While certain problems arise due to the cognitional misunderstanding and the lack of multimedia technology. This paper discussed the cognitive theory, practical application and effect of multimedia teaching, it also summarized the relevant advantages, disadvantages and required skills to enhance multimedia teaching effect.

This study will introduce a social chatbot to a child learning site to cultivate children’s understanding of emotions and strengthen their emotional expression skills using conversation scenarios between a child and social chatbot under the guidance of a kindergarten teacher to achieve emotional ease and adjustment effectiveness. The use of AI-aided emotional measurement is a completely new direction for academic research regarding the speech emotion and behavioral analysis of preschoolers. The benefits of this study are as follows. (a) The establishment of children’s emotional speech database and analysis module. Currently, EMO-DB and Beyond Verbal contain samples of speech emotions, but the analysis of children’s emotional speech has not been reported. The speech and conversation data collected from preschoolers in this study might be used to construct speech/emotion characteristic database, an emotional semantic identification database, an image/emotion analysis database, and an interactive script database designed for preschoolers to assist children’s emotional development, social learning, and provide references. (b) The development of a voice chatbot with EQ. The setting of this study can be used regarding a voice chatbot with EQ and applied in real-world learning sites, enabling the analysis of real-time emotions based on the emotional speeches and words in dialog with a social chatbot. Moreover, it can pro-vide appropriate conversations based on the different emotional states of the user. The social chatbot developed in this study might help nurture children’s EQ and cognitive abilities, as well as improve their emotional adjustment, management, and social support skills.

In the last years we have been witnesses of the increasing use of on-line educational systems known as e-learning. Every year there are more teaching centers, both public and private ones, which provide their students with web-based access to Learning Management Systems (LMS). Also, it is important to mention platforms for Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOC) which are a type of on-line educational system recently developed according to the design and participation akin to the presential courses at most prestigious universities. These systems provide to all kind of students with didactic resources as well as activities. In another hand the Adaptive and Intelligence Web-based Educational Systems (AIWBES) are made in order to solve the problem of to automate the adaptation of the system to the user features and needs. One more recent alternative is implementing Recommender Systems, which might offer their users customized suggestions to find activities and educational content. Such systems filter user information, for instance, preferences known by a user community for forecasting preferences for the new user, this approach is known as collaborative Filtering. With this proposal we are trying to model and represent the domain knowledge about the learner and learning resources discovering the learners’ learning patterns.

A coupling system was developed in the present study to simulate the heat transfer and physiological responses of the unclothed human body in hot and cold environments. This system included a computational thermal manikin controlled by a multi-node thermal model, which could dynamically respond to the environmental conditions. The computational thermal manikin was employed to determine the heat transfer between the human body and ambient environment as well as heat transfer coefficients at each body segment. The CFD simulation was then coupled with a multi-node thermal model to predict the heat transfer and human physiological responses in real time. The performance of coupling system was examined by comparing the simulated skin temperatures with the published measurements from human trials in hot and cold environments. The coupling system reasonably predicted the skin temperatures at local body segments with the maximum discrepancies between the observed values and simulated ones no more than 1.0 °C.

When designing a product, there are many possibilities of modeling construction. And it is influenced by tacit knowledge such as experiences of the designer and sense of aesthetics. Therefore, sometimes things made with the designer’s design model do not conform to the user’s mental model, so problems such as unknown usage, unsuited experience to use may occur.

Past research has established systematic effects of thermal stress on human comfort and cognitive performance. However, this research has primarily focused on extremes of temperature, ignoring moderate temperature ranges typically found in work environments and vehicles. Furthermore, models predicting the psychological impact of thermal environment have typically focused solely on perceived comfort, or when accounting for cognitive performance (e.g., Anno et al. 1996; Mueller et al. 2011) focused on in relatively extreme thermal conditions. As a consequence, there is limited empirical data, and no viable predictive models, for understanding the impact of moderate thermal stress on human comfort and performance. We report on an experimental study with 24 college-age participants that assessed cognitive performance (across a number of cognitive dimensions including manual dexterity, speed, dual-task performance, task switching, executive function, and attention), subjective measures of comfort and workload (including the CALM comfort scale, the affect grid, NASA-TLX, perceived effort, and other measures related to the thermal environment), and physiology (including heart rate, skin temperature, and breathing rate). Participants were tested during three 90-min sessions in a controlled thermal chamber in which the temperature was either cool (15 ºC/59 °F), room temperature (22.5 ºC/72.5 °F), or warm (30 ºC/86 ºF), during which they completed repeated rounds of comfort ratings, cognitive task performance, and rest. Results showed strong responses in physiological and comfort measures over time to differences in thermal environment. However, the thermal environment had differential effects on cognitive measures, with some producing little impairment, and others showing increases or decreases over time that were moderated by thermal environment. The results were examined within a latent variable model that suggests that comfort alone is not an adequate proxy for performance, even for moderate thermal stressors, and more complex predictive models are needed.

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact on nursing workload due to patient severity and nurse experience by using Natural GOMS Language (NGOMSL) model. To develop the model, a time and motion study was conducted using a real-time location system. After that, the nurse’s location and time data were used to develop multiple hierarchical task analysis charts. These HTA charts were used to create the NGOMSL model and identified the ICU nurse’s workflow patterns. The analysis results from the NGOMSL model showed that the patient severity and the nurse’s experience had significant impacts on nurse’s workload for in-room patient care activities, out of room activities, peer support, and talking to other healthcare professionals. This research empirically demonstrates that patient severity and nurse’s experience significantly influenced the nursing workload in an intensive care unit, and the NGOMSL model could measure the workload.

Drones have begun to find extensive use in commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and military applications in recent times. Drone maneuvers involve several pointing and crossing operations. In this regard, previous studies have shown that drone pointing operations can be modeled by the two-part model. In this study, we conduct a crossing operation experiment to control a drone to fly through a frame with a target width. Subsequently, we verify the applicability of Fitts’ law and the two-part model to drone crossing operations. Fitts’ law and the two-part model are both found to be suitably valid for crossing operations ( $$R^2 >0.940$$ R 2 > 0.940 ). Upon comparing the AIC values of the two models, we find that Fitts’ law, which has fewer parameters, is a better model for the crossing operation. Our results indicate that the drone operation time in crossing operations can be suitably predicted. In addition, based on models, we can compare drones and evaluate interfaces in drone crossing operations.

Driving safety has been an important issue of common concern among countries around the world and novice drivers continue to have the high fatality rate. Researches have shown that driver’s risk perception plays a leading role in driving safety. This research establishes a driver’s risk perception ability evaluation method including subjective cognition, risk perception and risk response to test and evaluate the differences in risk perception ability between experienced and novice drivers from both subjective and objective perspectives. Forty participants (20 novice drivers and 20 experienced driers) were asked to drive through six dangerous scenarios (both visible and hidden hazards were included) connecting to an eye tracking system and were requested to identify hazardous situations. The results indicated that novice drivers performed worse in subjective cognition, risk perception and risk response. There were significant experience differences in risk perception ability. The results could provide guidance for the further development of driving assistance system.

In recent years, the growing use of Software as a Service (SaaS) presents both new opportunities and challenges for organizations. Specifically, building trust in SaaS as an alternative to traditional methods of conducting business presents unique challenges for the CPA industry, who deals with sensitive financial client information and strict regulations. This study seeks to understand the attitudes and behavior of CPA industry staff members facing changing technology in the workspace. It investigates the usability of cloud SaaS collaboration platform, utilizing Microsoft Office 365 based solution and Microsoft SharePoint Online technology. It examines whether CPA staff members can overcome preconceptions about trust in SaaS tools. Specifically, can these tools, which store client information in the cloud, be used to safely exchange sensitive information between two parties while allowing CPA firms and clients to effectively collaborate on projects. The study design included a walk-through experiment as well as a semi-structured interview survey consisting of both open and closed-ended questions. The study participants were asked to use a pre-configured SharePoint collaboration portal and execute several predefined financial common tasks, following prescribed testing script, as well as fill an online survey regarding their experience. The study results demonstrate that CPA team members felt the software provides a better platform for communicating with clients than the currently used tools. However, participants’ comfort level managing specific sensitive client information on the new online portal was lower, pointing to the potential need for follow-up training and improved education for CPA team members on the SaaS platform capabilities.

The 3-D Secure protocol, introduced 20 years ago, aims at reducing online credit card fraud by authenticating the cardholder. Version 2 of the protocol, not yet deployed, addresses usability problems that have hindered the deployment of version 1 by introducing a frictionless flow for low risk transactions. But the frictionless flow does not authenticate the cardholder. Instead, it requires the merchant to send information to the issuer through a back channel, potentially violating the cardholder’s privacy. The paper analyzes the usability, privacy and security provided by 3-D Secure 2 and proposes an alternative protocol, simpler and less expensive to implement, where the cardholder is authenticated with a cryptographic credential stored in the cardholder’s browser with zero friction. The scheme can take advantage of a native bank app in the cardholder’s device to further authenticate the cardholder by fingerprint scanning or face recognition as made available by the device, and can be used for credit card purchases made on the merchant’s web site or on a merchant app.

Face spoofing attack is an attempt to obtain unauthorized access by using photos, videos or 3D maps of an user’s face. In this work, we propose a software-based anti-spoofing method that extracts multiple texture features based on Local Binary Patterns (LBP) in the grayscale and YCbCr color spaces to train binary Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier, which is then used to classify faces. The proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art methods using Attack Presentation Classification Error Rate (APCER), Normal Presentation Classification Error Rate (NPCER), Average Classification Error Rate (ACER), True Positive Rate (TPR), True Negative Rate (TNR), False Positive Rate (FPR), and Accuracy. Our method performs better than the other state-of-the-art methods when classifying spoofed and non-spoofed faces of the NUAA dataset. In particular, our method presents the smallest FPR, and thus guarantees robustness against spoofing attacks. Furthermore, our anti-spoofing method can be used in real-time applications with an average of 26 frames per second, providing high accuracy with little overhead to authentication systems.

Emotion affects human activities in our everyday lives. Therefore, it is quite normal to expect that emotion can act on our common human–computer interaction behaviors. In the present study, ambient sounds or pictures were provided to create emotional contexts and examine their influences on the initial stage of information processing—information detection. Three traditional cognitive experiments were conducted to test whether emotional information can exert influences on detection performances for briefly presented faces. The results showed that fear ambient sounds could enhance detection sensitivity for neutral faces but not fear faces. Moreover, such modulation existed only when human voices were applied. When music or pictures with fear expressions were presented, no enhancement in face detection performances was found. The findings suggest that emotional contexts affecting visual detection largely depend on the valence and presentation forms of emotion information.

Industry 4.0 implies the digitization of the shopfloor combining technologies such as sensors, augmented reality, and wearable robots that transform the manufacturing environment into a workplace where human-machine interactive symbiosis. As manufacturing companies develop strategies to innovate and engage with the digital transformation, the reality of the enabling technologies demonstrate serious challenges to the wider organizational adoption beyond the pilot phase albeit the promising evaluation results. This paper presents two cases based on two European research projects encompassing representatives of different industrial sectors and distils the challenges encountered that raise barriers to wider adoption.

For sedentary office workers, occupational sitting is a health hazard [1]. Excessive sitting, especially prolonged sitting (i.e. sitting more than one hour) without rest is highly likely to increase the risks of metabolic syndrome, obesity, cardiovascular disease and a range of other conditions, all of which cannot even be compensated for by taking exercise [2, 3]. Peer effect is a phenomenon whereby the behavior of an individual is affected by the behavior of their peers. It has been identified in the workplace with regards to wages, absenteeism and investment decision making in recent studies [4–7]. This paper contributes to the stream of research on peer effects on sedentary office workers by proposing a model to quantify the peer effects on office workers’ break behaviors, and by exploring how individual break behaviors can be affected by peers in the same workspace. In conclusion, peer effects have been detected in offices and have proved to have a marked influence on sedentary office workers’ resting behaviors.

This paper describes the current investigative process for weather-related events, explores the challenges facing weather investigations, and discusses potential solutions to enable better data capture for time-sensitive events to better understand the human factors associated with why these events occurred. Challenges discussed include (1) investigative data loss due to delayed notification of weather encounters and duration of flight following weather encounters if flight continued to destination, and (2) increasing lack of investigative information regarding pilot use of weather resources due to increasing availability of online sources that do not necessarily archive pilot or flight information. A review of available weather sources is presented with respect to investigative quality and availability of such information. Lastly, several mitigations are discussed for industry consideration to improve these investigative challenges.

Environmental problems, such as climate change are global in scope and multivariate in complexity. Today, citizen scientists can make important contributions by providing observations to further understand environmental related issues and by playing an important role in data collection. Citizen scientists now have the ability to use EPA certified testing tools that increase their ability to collect accurate and precise environmental data. Smart phones allow citizens to efficiently submit timely data. Given that citizen scientists now have the capacity to be involved in scientifically meaningful data acquisition campaigns, it is important to evaluate the citizen scientists’ experience and engagement using technology to fully maximize their potential contribution.For this study we developed an interactive mobile app, called mWatershed, which enabled citizen scientists to be involved in all aspects of the campaign: environmental monitoring, information gathering, data collection and analysis, and reporting. Specifically, the citizen scientists were given EPA tools to test their drinking water or neighboring surface waters for: toxic metals, certain pesticides, nutrients and certain bacteria. Citizen scientists had the option to use the mWatershed app. At the end of the campaign they were invited to take a survey assessing their experience and engagement.The survey utilized the MUX instrument, which provides a holistic assessment of mobile software-device use. In addition, we included tailored engagement questions. We report on the results from our study and discuss implications for future citizen scientists’ efforts. We also examine the MUX instrument in the context of this research.

In this paper we introduce our latest findings and insights we have acquired from our UX analysis on various North Korean IT products. The objective of this research is to understand the current status and the characteristics of the North Korean UX. Little is known about UX in North Korea. Based on the fact that UX has progressed in parallel with the advancement of information technology, we have obtained a number of North Korean IT products and services to grasp their UX. The products we used in our research include a smartphone, a tablet, a computer operating system and a website all made in North Korea. This paper describes the 1st phase of our research journey on North Korean UX through analysis on these products of ‘made in North Korea.’

This presentation aims to consider the process of inclusion and development of science and technology in developed and industrialized countries based on the experience of Japan’s efforts as well as to present some observations on its prospects.After the Meiji Restoration, Japan aimed at catching up with the Western Great Powers and pushed for the rapid modernization with “Wealth and military strength”. At that time, Japan was not only changing political systems drastically but also integrating the Western Great Powers’ advanced science and technology positively. As a result, in the days of World War I, Japan achieved entering permanent member of the League of Nations and came to occupy a big position globally. Although Japan was put under the control of allied powers, after the World War II, Japan planed integrating the overseas advanced technology again and will have current prosperity in one’s hand afterwards.On the other hand, when we pay more attention abroad, the utilization of science and technology is essential to the right profit in the achievement of “Sustainable Development Goals” that is an action plan shown in “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” adopted in the United Nations General Assembly of September 2015.In Japan, 3rd Basic Plan on Ocean Policy approved by the Cabinet in May 2018 prescribes about promoting measures such as “Improve scientific knowledge”, “Promote Arctic policy” and others based on science and technology. Therefore, we must consider modality of science and technology for save the ocean as Japan’s lifeline.In this presentation, we will focus on inclusion and development of science and technology in Japan’s ocean policy and present modality of science and technology in developed and industrialized countries.

Most current telemedicine efforts focus on tertiary care, general doctors being available at the patient end. In low resource countries (LRC), qualified doctors do not want to live in villages where the majority population lives. Therefore, telemedicine is the only solution. Besides, the technology should be indigenously developed to be effective and sustained. We developed necessary technology indigenously including web based software and online diagnostic devices like stethoscope and ECG. More devices are under development. Targeting primary or secondary care we deployed the system through an entrepreneurial model, giving video conferencing and online prescription by the consulting doctor. All data are archived for future reference and analysis. We also developed a mobile phone version using which roving operators can provide a doctor’s consultation to rural patients right at their homes, which has proved very useful for women, children, elderly and the infirm. The software also provides monitoring with provision for analyses for feedback. Starting in 2013 we have so far given consultation to more than 18,500 rural patients, paying a small fee, and the acceptance is increasing. At present more than 40 rural centres are active which can choose from a panel of 15 doctors who are providing consultation from places of their own. We are also planning to organize body tissue collection for pathological investigation at the telemedicine centres through arrangements with pathological centres in the neighbourhood. We feel this system can be spread throughout the LRCs benefitting the majority of the global population who are deprived at present.

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the relationships and risk factors with hypertension, diabetes, and proteinuria between urban office workers at Dhaka city and rural community residents at Bheramara sub-district who participated in a mobile health check-up service called portable health clinic (PHC).Methods: Data were collected from 271 urban office workers at Dhaka city in 2018 and 2,890 rural community residents at Bheramara sub-district between 2013 and 2016, who agreed to participate in the PHC. Data included basic socio-demographic and health check-up information. Descriptive statistics were conducted to compare the relationships with three main outcome variables (hypertension, diabetes, and proteinuria) and independent variables (ex, age, sex, pulse rates, and body mass index (BMI)).Results: The percentage of participants who were overweight or obese was higher among urban participants (51%) than rural participants (35%), whereas in rural participants, the percentage of being underweight was higher (11%) than in urban participants (0.4%). Among participants who had proteinuria, 60% in urban and 34% in rural participants had hypertension and 10% in urban and 14% in rural and had diabetes. Among those who had diabetes, 26% in urban and 45% in rural participants had hypertension and 3% in urban and 55% in rural participants had proteinuria. Among participants who had hypertension, 9% in urban and 37% in rural participants had proteinuria 12% in both urban and rural participants had diabetes.Conclusions: Hypertension, diabetes, and proteinuria were highly co-existed particularly among rural participants. Obesity is more prevalent among urban participants. PHC services is important for screening a large number of unaware and undiagnosed diabetic, hypertensive, and proteinuria patients both in rural and urban Bangladesh.