Universal Access in Human–Computer Interaction. Design and Development Approaches and Methods

This study addresses a need for a better understanding of methodological decisions in universal design (UD) of ICT systems. Practices employed by recognized Norwegian professionals on UD of ICT systems are studied through survey research. An online survey is used. Non-probabilistic stepwise selection identifies a local sample of 70 profiled professionals. A bottom-up, inductive and emergent approach is used for analyzing method usage and methodological approaches. Correlations are investigated. Results indicate Norwegian professionals overall use cross-method user-centered universal design, with direct user contact. Results also highlight the large overlap between UD and user-centered design (UCD). Personal factors and external values influence method selection more than external constraints – somewhat contradicting the perception that budget is the main key to ensuring UD and supporting the assumption that methodological competence is important for ensuring UD quality. Personal factors affecting approach and method selection are not necessarily linked to epistemologies or methodological stances, as initially assumed, but rather to the importance placed on user-involvement. The main influencing external factor is normative emphasis on UD value. Future work will focus on identifying success factors for universal design, and utilizing the knowledge in tools supporting universal design quality (UD-Q) control.

Older users with limited technology prior experience represent an important user group, in part due to their increase in the population in developed countries. The authorship team collectively have decades of research experience as well as significant industrial experience as part of knowledge transfer, conducting user trials and designing for this user group. It can be difficult to effectively communicate the depth of difficulties that older users can experience with new technologies and new technology interfaces, particularly to clients in technology sectors. Technology adoption models explain the factors that are at play in the likelihood of a user adopting and persisting with a particular type of technology, however they do not depict the temporal aspect of this journey. In previous work the user journey experience was simplified to aid comprehension from a design opportunity perspective and elapsed time. From some initial positive feedback from knowledge transfer clients with this simplified learning diagram, this paper proposes a series of depictions using this as a basis for communicating more specific and nuanced older user experiences to corporate stakeholders, principally designers and engineers.

Ambient Assisted Living is normally how reference is made to Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments when used to support old people in living independently and remain active, thus contributing to their physical and cognitive well-being (eInclusion). The main purpose of the paper is to show that the house is a particularly difficult environment, due to the variety of activities to be carried out in it and of abilities and preferences of people. Therefore, it is necessary to set up integrated infrastructures able to “reason” about the present status, physical and emotional, of the inhabitants and to offer them suitable support services.

Over the last years, several approaches have been defined to support Universal Design. However, a method that allows supporting universal design process in a systematic way is still lacking. Consequently, very often, products are merely designed according to design guidelines, without considering their effective context of use, while the success of products is often determined by the experience, intuition and sensitivity of designers, rather than by a real good design practice. In this context, the paper propose a systematic approach to support the conceptual design of modular and adaptive products, where for products we mean any device, tool, artefact, building, or service.

Capability loss simulation has great potential to improve the inclusivity of designs, through helping designers to understand the needs of people with reduced capabilities. However, its uptake in the design industry has been low, particularly in graphic design. This may be partly due to a poor fit between design tools and the work processes and tool requirements of designers.This study aimed to address this by seeking designers’ input into the design of concepts for vision loss simulation. Five design workshops were conducted, each with one or two graphic designers. In each, participants were given a list of requirements for simulator tools, summarised from previous studies, as well as 15 cards describing a range of simulator concepts. They then developed their own concept and explained the reasoning behind it.The resultant concepts are presented and analysed in this paper. Key aspects that designers consider important in simulator tools are identified.

The paper links latest insights from the field of social innovation research to the role of digital technologies and their potential to better address special needs. Therefore, it proposes a model to identify drivers and barriers for a broader use of digital social innovations in transformative processes towards inclusion. The paper develops a model of four distinct, yet interrelated contexts which analytically structure drivers and barriers in complex social innovation ecosystems, and which may also enable and support innovators to better understand driving and hindering factors for their digital social innovation initiative.

This paper presents a review of a decade of research (2005–2015) on the use of tablets and smartphones by older people, with a particular emphasis on research from the human computer interaction and human factors perspectives. The review groups the research according to views of older people about using tablets and smartphones, interaction devices and techniques, text and number entry, legibility and display considerations, and navigation.

Since its beginnings almost 3 decades ago, universal design has been called many things, from another term for accessible design to a process for designing to a panacea encompassing all design. Clearly, it is all of things, yet at the same time it is none. As a product it has form and function, yet it is not specialized, accessible design. As a process it is a way of designing, yet it is no different than the typical design process. As a panacea, it is about making all things usable and inclusive, yet that has been a utopian illusion – at least in the design of physical objects and spaces, from which universal design emerged. However, as digital technologies continue to emerge and evolve, the universal design appears poised to fulfill its potential and promise.

Mobile weather apps are just one class of products that ought to be developed under a Universal Design rubric. However, despite the large number of mobile weather apps available, most have not been developed from the ground up to be more universally accessible. This paper discusses a universally designed weather app that demonstrates how effective universal design can be for a commonly used service.

Understanding how to make inclusive design work for education and building up the knowledge base in this area is probably one of the most pressing tasks and challenges for Chinese design educators because of the aging problem. Inclusive design, as one of the many user-centered design approaches, has the potential to help students appreciate user capabilities, needs, and expectations [1], and is increasingly important to be introduced into mainstream design education so that they can diffuse outwards into industry [2]. However the adoption of inclusive design in design education still meets with many difficulties in China. The authors focus on the barriers and conduct an empirical study through literature review, expert interview and case study. Based on some key elements of China’s education system come from case study, a preliminary conceptual framework is proposed to organize the barriers and corresponding actions.

This paper examines a range of user-centred interactive techniques that have been proposed by experts to overcome universal accessibility issues during design development. These tools are presented and analysed according to the compatibility with design practice. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the state of art regarding interactive tools for universal design and indicates areas for further development for the benefit of universal products and services.

Library resource discovery tools (RDTs) are the latest generation of library catalogs that enable searching across disparate databases and repositories from a single search box. Although such “Google-like” experience has been applauded as a benefit for library users, there still exist usability and accessibility problems related to the diversity of user goals, needs, and preferences. To better understand these problems, we conducted an extensive literature review and in this process, we initially grouped issues into three categories: interface, resource description, and navigation. Based on these categories, we propose adaptation as an alternative approach to enhance the usability and accessibility of RDTs. The adaptations could be conducted on three levels pertaining to categories of issues found, namely: interface, information, and navigation level. The goal of this paper is to suggest how the process of adaptation could be considered in order to mitigate usability and accessibility issues of RDT interfaces.

This study investigated the usability and acceptability of tablet computers for older people in Thailand and the United Kingdom. Although some research has shown that older people can use tablet computers easily, other research has found that tablets are difficult to use for them particularly because of problems with the interaction styles. A study with ten participants in Thailand and eight in the UK was conducted, aged from 61 to 81 years old (mean age 67.9 years). Four of the UK participants and six of the Thai participants had used tablet computers before. All participants were able to complete a series of website tasks; however, some encountered problems such as text which was too small and color contrast between text and background that was not sufficiently clear. In addition, when participants zoomed, they tended to lose information and orientation on the webpage. Most participants found tapping, and zooming on the tablet very easy, but some had problems with tapping. This was possibly because their hands are drier than younger people’s. In particular, they found tapping on labels on webpages difficult. All participants had positive attitudes towards tablet computers and either enjoy use them or think they would enjoy using them. Some participants felt that tablet computers are easier and more convenient than desktop computers for them to use. Finally, contrary to expectations, participants preferred the concurrent verbal protocol to the retrospective verbal protocol.

Digital libraries are important resources for the education of all, including people with disabilities. Designing their interfaces to include broader range of users has been a challenge, partly because to evaluate their accessibility, access to participants is a difficult part. Hence, to overcome such limitation, researchers often use heuristics to evaluate library interfaces. Generic heuristics are typically lengthy or too general, hence not suitable to uncover accessibility issues with library interfaces. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing heuristics specifically designed for the evaluation of digital library interfaces. The initial set of heuristics was derived from four different sources independently rated by two domain experts. In addition, four new items were proposed based on observations we conducted in another study on the accessibility of digital libraries. The final set of heuristics proposed is consisted of sixteen items tailored specifically to evaluate the accessibility of digital library interfaces.

Identifying a set of methods to be applied specifically for game accessibility evaluation is a relevant issue to boost and enable further research in the field. To fulfill this objective, we defined five research questions and conducted a literature survey based on snowballing technique. To gather the studies in our survey, we defined a start set of works to serve as ground for the review and performed searches using references and citations of these studies. We found a set of accessibility evaluation methods focused on game accessibility and how they can be classified according to ISO standards. We also found that methods focused on mobile game context still need to be better explored because only a few evidences were retrieved regarding such a domain. Besides traditional accessibility aspects as barriers and users’ satisfaction, results show that distinct game aspects are considered during game accessibility evaluations. In addition, the most part of works refers to evaluation of exergames or games related to users’ mobility. Studies also refer to evaluations regarding more than one category of impairment, especially motor and visual impairments. Future researches in the field should focus on inspection-based methods, because traditional user-based methods have been largely referred as applicable to game accessibility context.

This paper presents the results of testing a hybrid mobile application with 5 print disabled university students. Three of the students were blind or near blind and two had normal vision but suffered from learning disabilities. While evaluating SpokenText Reader, an iOS smartphone application to aid the print disabled who study from audio recordings.The blind students encountered many accessibility barriers attributed to how hybrid mobile applications are treated by the access technology included in iOS 9.This research is significant since many organizations have utilized hybrid mobile applications to develop custom applications. While hybrid applications can allow for increased time to market, this increased time to market comes at the expense of the accessibility of an application to disabled people.

A study was undertaken with 61 computer science students to assess their perceptions of older people as users of desktop and laptop computers and smartphones. They were shown a picture of either a young or old woman or man and asked to assess the likelihood that this person would use these technologies and their level of expertise in them. The results showed that the students did have negative perceptions of the older people in comparison to young people, but that they did not have negative perceptions of women, and there was no evidence of a “double standard” of older women being perceived particularly negatively.

There have been few studies of abandonment of Assistive Technology, typically based on surveys and best practices expertise. This paper describes the application of classic experience sampling techniques to gather timely information about mobility aiding assistive technology in day-to-day use especially with respect to causes of abandonment. The paper describes the technical understructure of the system, which uses smartphones to gather, and web services to store, data. Also described is the setup and branching of the question set presented on the smartphone. Beyond details of use of the assistive technology, the system collects a verified scale of responses to determine the emotional affect of the participant. Sampling is taken several times during the day by actively pushing a set of questions that are tailored to the users technology and responses. There is also provision for the participant to push the information to the system when desired.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have come a long way on the usage of Information Systems (IS) at the several phases of the execution of their business plan. These organizations are very peculiar in the sense that most of the IS technologies have been developed as a consequence of the research work of the HEIs, positioning them as creators and as consumers of IS technologies. In fact, a considerable part of the IS products, currently available for the education sector, was initially created in a HEI as an in-house development. For these reason, the adoption of IS technologies by HEIs has followed two distinct paths: the in-house creation, previously described; and a current market adoption, similarly to most other companies IS adoption. Up to 2013 the IS applications for HEIs was mostly provided as web applications running on the HEI local datacenters and devoted to some specific phases of the HEI business plan. Currently, in 2016, this scenario has evolved in two ways: (i) to a wider range of type of applications, including: the old type of web application; new mobile applications; and new web application, running on the cloud and used as a service, (ii) to a more extended support coverage regarding the HEI business model phases, i.e., there are more IS applications supporting more aspects of the HEIs’ activities.In 2013, it was published a study regarding the accessibility support in HEI IS applications and related user practices. Due to the advances in IS technologies and their adoption by HEIs, it is now time to update this perspective on accessibility and HEIs IS, in order to assess how the progresses on IS applications used in HEIs have dealt with the accessibility concerns. The study updates the IS accessibility features as well as the new systems and new types of systems currently in use.

By ultimately offering a native language web experience to end users, the localization process – understood as the adaptation of an existing website from a linguistic, cultural and technical perspective to render it multilingual, unavoidably contributes to the Web for All paradigm. However, to date, there has been little discussion about how and to what extent the localization industry is adhering to web accessibility (WA) best practices as part of their regular workflows to fully pursue that goal. This paper gives an account of the latter by reporting on the qualitative data gathered from a series of semi-structured interviews with 15 representatives of six different world-renowned language service providers (LSPs). Findings reveal that, while LSPs deal with web content and technology on a daily basis and now offer a broad spectrum of web-related services, including Digital Marketing and User Experience Design, conforming to WA requirements is not critical yet for the localization industry. We therefore explore why localization companies do not see themselves as key stakeholders in the value chain for web accessibility and we review which would be the main drivers for them to consider compliance with WA guidelines in the future.

The majority of individuals diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) experience a major decline in their abilities due to the progression of MS after five years post-diagnosis. Following this period, they need to learn how to cope with the functional limitations caused by the disease and how to age with MS. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centres advise that individuals with MS take control of decisions affecting their wellness and life and self-manage their disease as often as possible. Mobile health technologies provide potential support for disease self-management. There are currently nine MS-specific mobile applications on the market to help individuals with MS manage their health and daily activities. However, none of these apps was tested with their target population. Moreover, many individuals with MS have numerous usability problems with current mobile touchscreen interfaces. Therefore, the existing apps need to be usable by individuals with MS, as well as people aging with this mobility-affecting chronic disease. This research contributed to the state-of-knowledge about the design of mobile interfaces for people aging with MS and tested current mobile interfaces with people with MS and older adults to provide recommendations for the design of mobile interfaces for people aging with MS to further inform the design of the mobile application for individuals aging with MS.

Usability of web sites has been a research area that has been investigated in many genres such as e-commerce, e-government or education. University web sites is one of the specific genres, which requires special attention in terms of usability since they are considered as virtual gateways to students from all over the world. The aim of this study is to evaluate the work done in this specific area to determine the general trends in the usability of university website research and provide useful insights for researchers and practitioners that develops websites for universities or academic institutions. Therefore in the scope of this study usability research conducted on university websites over the last decade, from 2006 to 2016, has been systematically reviewed. 53 papers in total were accessed and investigated. Major findings include that generally studies adapted user-based usability evaluation methods and the most frequently used user-based methods were usability testing and questionnaires. Many of the studies just reported the usability problems rather than providing recommendations for the reported issues. In addition to general usability issues, the most frequently mentioned usability issues were navigation, UI design and information/content quality.

Logging user interaction data with computational artifacts can be handy in identifying activities and issues associated with interactive decision-making processes. However, while such data commonly results in a temporally linear construction, information involved in such processes is not well structured from a knowledge engineering perspective. Consequently, both its consumption and understanding are not straightforward processes. Considering highly immersive environments with interaction through multiple modalities, the tracking of such knowledge becomes even more complex. Such environments have been increasingly used to support decision-making practices, which may involve cognitive-intense activities and critical thinking. Inferring concepts and knowledge from logging data in such activities is key for improving design of decision support systems, and general systems as well.

Visiting a museum should be an apprised experience. However, for a part of the visitors, the experience can be disappointing in some aspect, either because of the vastness of the estate, leading to tiredness, or the inappropriateness of the presented objects for the consumer intentions. A solution is to endorse different arrangements according with the visitors individuality, e.g. expertise, previous behavior and actions, identified preferences, or age. M5SAR (Mobile Five Senses Augmented Reality System for Museums) project which aims at the development of an Augmented Reality system, consisting of a mobile application and a device/gadget, in order to explore the 5 human senses. This paper explores a solution supported in association rules to recommend which object a user should see. The method encloses other potentialities, also explored, such as the suggestion of which items to buy in the museums’ souvenir shops. The recommender uses data acquired from the M5SAR user’s account (e.g., expertise, seen objects, and bought objects) and from the mobile application usage (e.g., objects explored). Some tests were made using data adapted from public datasets.

We develop a mobile face analysis system to detect the stress of motor vehicle operators. This system has the potential to predict and notify the driver when their stress has reached a level that may affect their ability to drive. The primary goal is software that has reduced computational requirements to be deployed in a mobile environment. For a single subject, not all frames are needed to characterize the emotion in the scene. Some expressions may be spurious, neutral, or repetitive and reduce prediction accuracy. To this end, we investigate the importance of video summarization for facial emotion recognition in mobile applications.We detail a novel algorithm that succinctly describes an entire frontal face video. Previous work determines the minimal sampling rate needed for facial expressions, but summarization occurs at evenly spaced intervals that might not align with frames where expressions are the most visible. Minimum Sparse Representation selects exemplar frames where expression is most prominent. However, the sampling rate is not based on the frequency of expressions. We propose a novel algorithm that combines both approaches: an appropriate sampling rate is determined for each video clip and frame exemplars are selected at dynamic intervals. The proposed method improves accuracy over four other video summarization algorithms on a real-world data set from Motor Trend Magazine’s Best Driver Car. The approach reduces the number of frames required by 83.21% from 308,202 to 51,739, while reducing mean squared error by 61.87%.

For users with disabilities using mouse-replacement devices, we propose an email interface that adapts to the abilities of the user. The application implements HAIL (Hierarchical Adaptive Interface Layout) and provides an interface using Google’s Gmail API. The interface was intended to be simplistic and user-friendly, with large, color-coded buttons, an uncluttered screen, and functional access to the user’s inbox. Through the two main windows, the user is able to read and compose emails. We tested the application with the mouse-replacement interface “Camera Mouse”, which uses a web camera on a computer to track the user’s face to control the mouse pointer. The characteristics of HAIL Gmail were implemented with the strengths and weaknesses of Camera Mouse in mind. Initial testing of the HAIL Gmail included several subjects without disabilities. Participants were able to complete the tasks and stated that the interface was relatively easy to use. These subjects also offered some constructive feedback in the form of possible improvements such as modifying how to compose emails. After the initial stages of HAIL Gmail, we plan to extend the capabilities of the interfaces to the point where we can deploy it for public use.

Color blind people face various difficulties interacting with web systems. Interface adaptation techniques designed to recoloring images and web interfaces may deal with several color blindness visualization issues. However, different situations, preferences and individual needs make complex choosing the most suitable recoloring technique. This article proposes an original algorithm to compute similarity between colors. We aim to support the decision process of select the most suitable adaptation technique according to the type of color blindness and interaction context. The algorithm ponders arguments for taking the users’ preferences and limitations into account. Our experimental analysis implement various configurations by testing the weights in the color distance calculation according to the colorblindness type. The obtained results reveal the advantages of considering the type of colorblindness in the color similarity computation.

The unobtrusive use of smartphone technology, as a facilitator and as a means of capturing the daily activities, can be seen as a great challenge in routine monitoring and in promoting behavioural change in older adults. In the present study, a protocol of a sequence of emotional stimuli database was combined with a sequence of emotion-free text typing using a dedicated keyboard of a smartphone and used for capturing the users’ patterns of typing, in terms of hold time (HT), alteration time (AT) and pressure (PR) of each key. Six older adults (three male/female) were employed in the study and sequences of images with facial expressions of Ekman’s six basic emotions (with the addition of the neutral one) were used as stimuli in a three-trial fashion. Statistical analysis of HT, AT and PR data revealed differences in the typing due to emotions alteration, setting a new domain for the analysis and behavioural modeling of older adults’ typing patterns under specific emotional stimuli. This combinatory approach amongst emotional and physical status could be adopted in the field of intelligent monitoring of the healthy ageing and could be extended to elderlies’ pathology cases, such as Parkinson’s disease, as approached by the i-PROGNOSIS initiative.

This study aims to improve the efficiency of hospital registration user interface by employing user’s experience data. Users complete registration task under the guidance of a sequence of dialog boxes that lead the user through a series of well-defined steps, it is usually called Wizard Interface. Wizard Interface is good for first-time users due to its error prevention, but is troublesome for experienced users. This study intend to improve the usability of hospital registration user interface through Personalized Shortcut Options and Group Recommending Options. This study carried out observation study, hospital director interview, case study, and developed a prototype interface with Personal Shortcut Options and Group Recommending Options. Heuristic Evaluation was carried out for usability inspection in the process of prototype development. The evaluation of interface comprehension and learnability was completed by users experiment. Statistical results show that: (1) Applying personal user experience to develop Personal Shortcut Options can simplify the registration processes and improve efficiency. Through the experiment of learnability, users reached a plateaus of development after 2 to 3 times of practice. (2) Applying user group experience to develop Group Recommending Options that prompt options for majority users as priorities, significantly raise the efficiency of searching options. Users who choose option for minority users can also benefits from raising efficiency due to grouping effect of complex options. (3) Application of Responsive Disclosure can lead users to grasp the layout of interface; its effectiveness and feasibility are both verified.

User interaction logging is a powerful tool for user behavior studies, usability testing, and system metrics analysis. It may also be applied in large data contexts, such as social networks analysis, helping data scientists to understand social patterns. Data scientists, User Experience (UX) designers, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) practitioners, and software engineers have been performing the analysis of this kind of data to obtain knowledge regarding the source system’s usage. User interaction log data, however, can also be critical for final users themselves. They can use interaction log data, for example, (i) to revisit his own interaction path, redoing his steps that lead to a relevant insight or discovery; (ii) to learn from someone else’s interaction path new ways to perform a given task; (iii) or even to analyze critical steps of a process supported by the source system. The need for final users to consume interaction log data is presenting significant challenges for UX researchers. Influenced by Semiotic Engineering, a HCI theory that views human-computer interaction as a form of human communication between designers and users mediated by a computer system, we propose three user interaction log abstraction levels - strategic, tactical, and operational - to frame and guide user interaction logs’ UX design. In this paper, we discuss how those abstraction levels can be used as UX design guidelines and present some research questions to be explored - how source system captures interaction log is central for log analysis strategy and how a strategic level can be identified thought the analysis of interaction logs data from other abstraction levels.

Advanced Driver Assistant systems (ADAS) are receiving increased research focus as they promote a safer and more comfortable driving experience. In this context, personalization can play a key role as the different driver/rider needs, the environmental context and driver’s/rider’s state can be taken into account towards delivering custom tailored interaction and performing intelligent decision making. This paper presents an ontology-based approach for personalizing Human Machine Interaction (HMI) elements in ADAS systems. The main features of the presented research work include: (a) semantic modelling of relevant data in the form of an ontology meta-model that includes the driver/ rider information, the vehicle and its HMI elements, as well as the external environment, (b) rule-based reasoning on top of the meta-model to derive appropriate personalization decisions, and (c) adaptation of the vehicle’s HMI elements and interaction paradigms to best fit the particular driver or rider, as well as the overall driving context.

Technologies have revolutionized the way campaigns are developed in the digital medium, and how customers search for information and buy products or services. At the same time, the development of technologies has led to an exponential growth of information, a proliferation of data sources, and the emergence of new tools to support the process of building campaigns targeted at customers. In this context, there is a challenge to surmise that technologies can be the solution to improve communication and information dissemination through the development of digital marketing platforms. The platforms automate campaigns, by using and accessing information stored in the tourism and hospitality organizations’ Data Warehouse, to perform data analysis that include data mining techniques, bringing this way economic benefits for these organizations. The present article proposes a methodological framework for the development of a Marketing Intelligence Automation system, with the objective to facilitate the management of an integrated marketing strategy for online channels of hospitality and tourism organizations.

Multimodal interaction has proved to be a promising way for developing more accessible applications, especially for those people with visual impairments, but it still presents many challenges like the use of touchscreen devices and dynamic resources embedded in web content. For HCI, multimodal interaction is characterized by human intervention using a combination of different sensory modalities as input and output channels. In this paper, it is presented a scheme for recommendation of multimodal components for developing accessible applications and it is discussed lessons learned from its use in the development and evaluation of applications using that scheme. This scheme has already been used to guide the development of two software tools, both aimed at improving accessibility for visually impaired people through multimodal interaction. Results have shown evidence that this scheme is fit for purpose and has given some pointers for a framework for multimodal accessible software development.

This paper presents an accessible platform for the automatic creation of icons through a simple (web) form. The platform allows the creation of personalized icons that can be used as a navigation or search option in web context replacing the usual text keyword metaphor. With the development of this platform we aimed to provide a simpler automatic method of icon creation, allowing users to personalize their icons and share them with others. The icons created are stored in a database that can be used in different Web or digital contexts. As a proof of concept, the platform was integrated with an existing Web application for video searching in the YouTube platform through icons hyperlinks: SAMi [1]. The resulting integrated platform was assessed for usability (user tests) and accessibility (with an automatic assess tool). The results showed the interface is accessible to a group of people with intellectual disabilities, increasing their performance, satisfaction, motivation and autonomy.

Museums are great places where visitors can see, hear, touch, feel and experience interesting things. The visit is even better when visitors can select what they want to see and have ways to enhance their experience. Many museums have a huge amount of collections and objects, selecting which ones to see is sometimes difficult. A system that adapts on the fly to the user’s preferences, suggesting objects that he might want to see, paths he would like to follow in their visit, as well as the complementary information he needs about each object, will be of fundamental importance. Smartphones, with their Apps are the best solution to help enhance the museum experience, nevertheless, most of the time they fail, because their user interface (UI) does not adapt to the user’s preferences. This paper presents: (a) an initial framework for a museum application where augmented reality and gamification are connected with an adaptive UI, (b) an adaptive card implementation to realize the UI, and (c) an initial fast object recognition implementation for the markers used for the augmented reality.

Personal health data is acquired, processed, stored, and accessed using a variety of different devices, apps, and services. These are often complex and highly connected. Therefore, privacy violations and other use or misuse of the data are hard to detect for many people, because they are not able to understand the trace (i.e., the provenance) of that data. We present a visualization technique for personal health data provenance using comics strips. Each strip of the comic represents a certain activity, such as entering data using an app, storing or retrieving data on a cloud service, or generating a diagram from the data. The comic strips are generated automatically using recorded provenance graphs. The easy-to-understand comics enable all people to realize crucial points regarding their data.

Attention is crucial for autonomous agents interacting with complex environments. In a real scenario, our expectations drive attention, as we look for crucial objects to complete our understanding of the scene. But most visual attention models to date are designed to drive attention in a bottom-up fashion, without context, and the features they use are not always suitable for driving top-down attention. In this paper, we present an attentional mechanism based on semantically meaningful, interpretable features. We show how to generate a low-level semantic representation of the scene in real time, which can be used to search for objects based on specific features such as colour, shape, orientation, speed, and texture.

Sensory processing differences, including auditory, visual, and tactile, are ideal targets for early detection of neurodevelopmental risk. However, existing studies focus on the audiovisual paradigm but ignore the sense of touch. In this work, we present a multisensory delivery system that can deliver audiovisual stimuli and precisely controlled tactile stimuli to infants in a synchronized manner. The system also records multi-dimensional data including eye gaze and physiological data. A pilot study of six 3–8 month old infants was conducted to investigate the tolerability and feasibility of the system. Results have shown that the system is well tolerated by infants and all the data were collected robustly. This work paves the way for future studies charting the meaning of sensory response trajectories in infancy.

Human centred and more traditional HCI design process approaches, such as plain participatory design, are broadly used for designing software and other sorts of computational artefacts for people with cognitive disorders, such as autism. Although it is not straightforward to find out proper requirements for those artefacts because people with autism have a poor ability for social communication and interaction allied to other ecology-related or circumstantial problems. The work described in this article aims to conceive innovative ways of designing computer-based artefacts for children with autism. These artefacts should be smart enough to adapt not only their interface elements but also the way they interact with different people (children, in this case). We report on a design method devised to tackle the use of computational artefacts by children with autism set within the Research through Design Approach for HCI [24] inspired on the HCD approach [10].

Being picky with food for children not only has impact on children’s development and behavior, but also on parent’s feeding practice. Improper feeding practices may lead to picky eaters become increasingly serious. How-ever, how feeding practices will affect children’s eating behavior is still in the exploratory stage. This study will explore the relationship between the feeding practices and children’s eating behavior. A total of thirty-two valid questionnaires were collected using the Comprehensive Feeding Practice Questionnaire (CFPQ) and Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ). The K-means clustering was used to classify the parent’s types that will define the future product design groups. Then explore the relationship between feeding practice and eating behavior by Analysis of Variance. The results of the study grouped parents into the five types of feeding practice were Modeling, Rewarding, Free-style, Passive-Monitoring, and Active-Restrictive type. In addition, the result of ANOVA show that if you want to improve the enjoyment of food for young children, it is recommended not to use food to regulate children’s emotions, the need for appropriate weight control, and often give nutrition education. Secondly, teaching timely nutrition knowledge let children eating speed not too slow. Thirdly, being a good diet model affects positively on drinking water habits and the desire to drink. Lastly, reduce child control, occasional use of food regulation mood, establish a good diet model, and give nutrition education can reduce child food fussiness.

Playing is part of children’s daily life and it is an important aspect of their development because it promotes not only entertainment, but also influences the psychological, physiological and social development of children. The playful aspect of the toys awakens other interests in Children with Disabilities (CwD), encouraging them to set aside their limitations. However, they are often prevented from playing because the toys are not accessible. Studies also show that the adoption of accessible toys can be an effective resource in CwD rehabilitation treatment. Thus, this work presents the results of a Systematic Review that investigated methods, techniques and interaction strategies used for coeiving and/or adapting accessible toys for CwD. In the context of this research, accessible and interactive toys are named Inclusive Toys (IT). The results of this SR allowed researchers to formulate hypotheses from the interaction and automation resources identified, to specify a model for the conception and design of IT supported by PD techniques.

Professionals working with visually impaired children (i.e. specialist teachers and educators, Orientation and Mobility trainers, psychologists, etc.) have to create their own teaching materials. Indeed, only few adapted materials exist, and do not fully meet their needs. Thus, rapid prototyping tools and methods could help them to design and make materials adapted to teaching to visually impaired students. In this study, we first designed a blog enabling professionals to create their own teaching materials. Then, we set up a challenge with five teams including one professional of visual impairment and students in computer science. The aim of each team was to design and make a teaching material, based on handcrafting, 3D printing tools and cheap micro-controllers, fitting the needs of the professional. After they have used their material with visually impaired students, we interviewed the professionals in order to evaluate usage and satisfaction. The professionals reported that the materials were easy to make, and valuable for teaching to visually impaired students. They also reported that DIY prototyping, based on 3D printing and cheap microcontrollers, enables them to create their own teaching materials, and hence accurately meet unanswered needs. Importantly, they would advise their colleagues to use this method and new tools. However, they consider that they would need assistance to create new materials on their own.

The development of applications for children, and particularly for those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), is a challenging task. In this context, careful consideration of the characteristics of these users, along with those of different stakeholders, such as parents and teachers, is essential. Also, it is important to provide different ways of using applications through multimodal interaction, in order to adapt, as much as possible, to the users’ needs, capabilities and preferences. Providing multimodality does not mean that users will interact multimodally, but provides freedom of choice to the user. Additionally, enabling multiple forms of interaction might also help understanding what actually works better, for an audience that is not always able to express an opinion regarding what might work. In this article, we take on previous work regarding the definition of a Persona for a child diagnosed with ASD and, considering the goals above, propose and evaluate a first prototype of an application targeting the audience represented by this Persona. This application, aims to serve as a place for communication and information exchange among the child, her family, and teachers and supports multimodal interaction.

Flexible and individually adaptable learning environments for children with ASD are highly desired. In this paper we discuss the design and implementation of such mobile learning game specifically for learning Chinese vocabulary and item recognition. Instead of using premade ones, most learning contents in our application are made by parents.

The high rate of atypical handedness and motor deficits among the children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been repeatedly reported. Recently, tablet-assisted systems are increasingly applied to ASD interventions due to their potential benefits in terms of accessibility, cost and the ability to engage many children with ASD. In this paper, we propose the design of a tablet game system to assess the hand usage in movement manipulations of children with ASD. To play the games designed in this system, it requires good eye-hand coordination, precise and quick hand movements and cooperation with partners. The games can be played by one player using two hands or by two players each of whom using one hand. We present the system design and a small preliminary usability study that verified the system functionality in recording objective performance data for offline analysis of the hand usage of the players. Results showed that the proposed system was engaging to children with ASD and their TD (i.e. typically developing) peers, and could induce collaborative activities between them. The system was also shown to efficiently evaluate the usages of the dominant hand and the non-dominant hand of the users. We found that children with ASD showed different patterns of hand usage behaviors from the TD participants when using this system.