Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Users Diversity

In this paper we took an attempt to create a set of features to describe different types of user models. We classify the features into different sets like development process, data store, user study and so on and also describe it with the help of a case study. Finally we pointed out the benefits of standardization in user modeling.

The objective of the research project was to present new possibilities of accessibility and usefulness analysis in virtual designing of the work environment for a disabled person. This new computer tool of graphic record of anthropometric and biometric data of the set of layers was employed for a number of spectacular analyses essential for the designing practice. Results of the following investigations were presented: transfer from the wheelchair into the car of a disabled person and the accessibility of the car interior for a disabled driver, accessibility of a supermarket space for a person on a wheelchair, accessibility of furniture and equipment within the space of a typical kitchen meeting the requirements of universal design. The objects of investigations and analyses were transferred to the virtual environment of the ergonomic module of CATIA v5 computer system.

Norman suggested three dimensions of emotion to approach user-centred design to raise awareness of the importance of designing for users to achieve a higher level of satisfaction. In other words, the design should satisfy the user’s emotional desires beyond usability. This opinion explains user-centred design more broadly. Companies, such as Apple and Microsoft, have already employed anthropologist to observe users’ daily behaviour. Unfortunately, gathering information on users’ needs is costly, time consuming and complex and has, therefore, become a barrier for designers. Additionally, most emotional design only covers shape design instead of all emotional aspects. There is little previous work devoted to tackling these problems. This research, therefore, proposed using empathic design with the assistance of personas as the main approach to emotional design. We first investigated the designers’ current design pattern to explore the difficulties and problems. Next, personas were used to ascertain how they could help designers to engage in emotional design. Comparisons were then given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. This study invited 16 designers to partake in this assessment. We explored how personas help designers in idea generations by using emotional design and some guidelines were suggested for future research.

We report on work towards an architecture that incorporates accessible design methods, guidelines and support tools for building and testing adaptive and accessible user interfaces (UI) for users with mild impairments. We especially address interaction constraints for elderly people, both during application design time and at run time, targeting on hybrid TV platforms. The functional principle of our architecture is twofold: At runtime, it lets users interact with hybrid TV applications through an ensemble of accessible UIs that cover different input and output modalities and are jointly adapted via user profiles and real-time feedback. At design time, it allows developers to re-use UIs and representative user personas in simulating the effect of the UI modalities on different impairments.

The purpose of this study is to develop a model of cognitive impairment to help designers consider the range of issues which affect the lives of people living with such impairment. A series of interviews with experts of cognitive impairment was conducted to describe and assess the links between specific medical conditions, including learning disability, specific learning difficulties, autistic spectrum disorders, traumatic brain injury and schizophrenia, and the types of cognitive impairment associated with them. The results reveal some of the most prevalent and serious types of impairment, which – when transformed into design guidance – will help designers make mainstream products more inclusive also for people with cognitive impairment.

This paper proposes a method to integrate human modeling and simulation with the persona method to efficiently predict human behavior with different personalities in a variety of situations. We have applied the method to predict residents’ behavior in an emergency situation to design emergency announcement strategies and have confirmed that this method can semi-automatically construct several different personas and their behavior scenarios successfully. The method provides a systematic procedure for creating personas and is expected to reduce time and cost in the design process.

Ubiquitous, mobile and wearable networks unified on the internet are rapidly promoted and introduced into our daily living sphere. That means people, unfamiliar to information technology and human computer interaction issue, are becoming a large part of the users of the unified information environment. Thus we need a new concept of information environment design which does not force a person to have and use any computer skills. Such an information environment would provide modest and human friendly manner for users including elderly people.

This paper introduces a concept of Kansei modeling from the aspects of users’ needs in information service. To show its attractive facilities, this paper describes the state of the art of our studies on personal information assistance service in a smart space, such as ubiquitous and wearable environment with robotic information processing mechanism.

The aim of

inclusive design

is to successfully integrate human factors in the product development process with the intention of making products accessible for the largest possible group of users. In order to meet this challenge, the involvement of human users has so far been an efficient approach. Yet, such ergonomics evaluation experiments that employ a versatility of user groups can be very time and cost-intensive. Therefore,

virtual user models

(VUM) have been proposed for supporting certain phases of the product development process. In this paper a

model-based design approach

is proposed, which supports inclusive design of physical user interfaces of consumer products at the early stages of product development. Accordingly the objective is to explore how virtual user models can be used to conceptualize user interfaces of consumer products in such a way that even the needs of users with physical impairments are fully considered.

Many research projects have identified three major obstacles to a broad implementation of Design for All: lack of awareness among users, designers and suppliers, technical feasibility and commercial viability. Mainstream manufactures do not have a detailed understanding of the needs of people with disabilities. This paper presents an approach to use standards-based Virtual User Models that covers mild and moderate disabilities to support designers in understanding these needs. This approach consists of a virtual laboratory with three design phases to allow designers to plan and evaluate the user interfaces of their products. We review here the state of the art and present our Virtual User Model as a mixture of human and environment context.

The automatic adaptation of information visualization systems to the requirements of users plays a key-role in today’s research. Different approaches from both disciplines try to face this phenomenon. The modeling of user is an essential part of a user-centered adaptation of visualization. In this paper we introduce a new approach for modeling users especially for semantic visualization systems. The approach consists of a three dimensional model, where semantic data, user and visualization are set in relation in different abstraction layer.

User-centred design (UCD) has been widely used to solve those failure products that are not proper designed for target users. Although UCD techniques are varies, some similar drawbacks were found as it requires complex skills to manipulate and it is time consuming as well as costly. Big enterprises have no problem with carrying out UCD because of rich resources. However, most of researchers made effort on the improvement of approaching UCD. Lack of studies contributed to the area of promotion UCD to those companies which do not launch UCD correctly or barely know UCD. Neither any of studies addressed on the investigation in difficulties those companies have and therefore helped them to be solved. Hence, this research aimed to assess a cost-effective UCD model to assist designers in idea generation. 16 designers were invited into the two-phase assessment. In addition, there were 51 end users as the participants to evaluate that if the designers who followed the proposed model can generate better UCD ideas. In this project, an MP3 was chosen because it is portable, easy, and with both aesthetics and functionality factors. In addition, 25-34 office workers were selected as the target users as the participants. This research was a whole process of the assessment of a cost-effective UCD model in assist designers’ idea generation, and this assessment successfully showed that the cost-effective UCD model could eliminate the complex of the UCD skills and the cost, in which the UCD results were identified by the users. Therefore it could encourage more designers to apply UCD in their work. Further recommendations were also illustrated in this paper.

This article presents application of modal analysis for the computation of data base of biological objects set and extraction of three dimensional geometrical features. Traditional anthropometric database contains information only about some characteristic points recorded as linear or angular dimensions. The current face recognition systems are also based on the two-dimensional information. Such biometric systems are used obviously during passenger control on the airport or boundary crossing. To increase level of security the methods need to operate on three-dimensional data. In the article authors present method of 3D modal analysis for decomposition, extraction features and individual coding of analyzed objects sets. Authors apply empirical modal analysis PCA (Principal Component Analysis) for two types of 3D data: human femur bones and human faces. Additionally for face recognition, as support information, the thermal (infrared) images was tested. In this paper the results of PCA analysis of each type of database were presented and discussed.

Introduction:

The real challenge for information technologies is not content or curriculum development, but the development of interactive mechanisms by which to make information individually relevant, timely, and, tailored to promote information sharing. At first, this article reviews common technological approaches accessible to elderly that are intended to increase adherence to medication. Then, in a formative process the study proposes a novel framework to design and evaluate an interactive automated pill reminder for older adults. The proposed interactive pill reminder offers a solution by dispensing medication to the elderly in a way that is secure, routine, and monitored by their physician or pharmacist. Considering the interaction tasks between the device and a physician or pharmacist, coupled with their work schedules, the device is designed so that it is simple enough for the industry to absorb it.

Background:

Non-adherence among patients has been identified as a major public health problem that imposes a considerable financial burden upon modern health care systems. This burden includes 10% of hospital admissions, 23% of admissions to nursing homes and has been estimated to cost $100 billion each year in the US. Information technology has been used both to measure and enhance adherence. Measurement has been through advanced technologies, such as smart pill-bottle caps, to capture medication-taking behavior and using information technology to collect and synchronize both frequency and time of opening of the medication bottle, with a central database.

Methodology:

The development of the pill reminder includes three main stages: (1) Designing the high fidelity prototype based on heuristics and available guidelines and collecting necessary information applicable in the design of the interactive pill reminder (i.e., user requirement analysis, general requirements of small screen devices, and design principles for older adults); (2) Pilot testing the mid-fidelity interactive pill reminder prototype and analyzing the results (i.e., examining the mid-fidelity product by user interviews, a focus group, and a usability questionnaire); and (3) Proposing a list of tasks to improve the future high-fidelity prototype (i.e., proposing future high-fidelity design heuristics).

Conclusion:

Non-adherence to medication is a major health burden specifically in the elderly population. Designing new automatic pill reminders for elderly can open new ways to improve adherence rates among them; however, more formative research needs to be conducted to establish preliminary design guidelines in designing such reminders. This study collected necessary information applicable in the design of the interactive pill reminder. The result was the development of a high fidelity prototype for an automatic pill reminder.

Touchscreen technology has been shown to offer advantages to older and novice users of digital products, through the relative ease of learning the interaction mechanisms and flexibility of the interface to provide explicit and contextual labelling enabling task sequences to be executed. Interaction problems caused by age related changes in sensory perception, cognition and motor skills are able to be predicted using the Inclusive Design Toolkit, however this technique is unable to predict usage problems caused by lack of prior experience of digital interaction patterns. This paper reports on the ‘errors’ that older users made in a pilot study using a tablet touchscreen device in the course of completing tasks such as turning the device on, setting an alarm and sending an email. An initial classification of the problems encountered by the users is made and the potential for prediction of such errors is discussed.

Our daily lives are supported by various technologies. Generally said, however, older adults cannot benefit from technologies due to difficulties with use of them. As some difficulties seem to be related with the fact that older adults require more time to get used to a new thing, and it is suggested that affectiveness may facilitate of use of technologies, this study tried to clarify the influence of continuous use of portable game system on older adults’ everyday life and emotion. By four-week continuous use of portable game system, some influence of it on older adults’ everyday life and emotion was confirmed. The results suggested the possibility that older adults could utilize technologies which originally aimed at younger users and affectiveness could facilitate it.

This paper presents a holistic approach to design a media system based on a new user interface and interaction device aimed to motivate seniors of the generation plus enhancing their daily physical activity. As a result of the newly designed game, the senior finds himself within a colorful world of a game in which he interacts with small lively figures using a newly designed interaction device accounting for physical activity. The combination of both design elements, lead to a gameplay that provides adequate mechanism for cognitive and physical activity, challenging representatives of the generation plus to exercise more.

This paper serves as a preliminary framework design for studying data that is reported by patient’s living within a retirement community and how this impacts the quality of care that is received when using a telemonitoring device. It reviews concepts that are involved in usage of this type of technology and presents some initial research questions in studying this population.

This paper examines how motion sensitive remote control devices can improve the usability of television sets for older adults. It investigates the use of a pointing remote control where the actions are read and selected on the TV screen by a group of users between 65-85 years old. It was seen that the test participants universally wanted a more usable and less complicated device in both appearance and employability. The preferences in relation to channel choice were relatively narrow, mainly in the use of only 4-7 channels. The argument is proposed that the use of differing design principles facilitates older adults in also becoming proficient users of new technologies, especially focusing on the use of digital television (DTV) and the many opportunities and options to access new features that arise.

Online Personal Health Records (PHR) software has the potential to provide older adults with tools to better manage several aspects of their health, including their use of medications. In spite of this potential, we still know little about how to make PHRs accessible for older adults. We also know little about how to design PHRs in a way that will enable older adults to get a valuable return on their time investment in using such systems. In this paper, we present our experience partnering with a group of older adults to obtain design guidelines for the design of a PHR with a focus on medication management. We discuss the outcomes of our design partnership and provide an overview of the design of a web-based PHR we designed based on these outcomes.

According to the previous clinical studies, the social contact will be influenced on the life quality and health of elders. Hence, in health care for elders, how to maintain their social relationship is of primary importance. Recently, Morris proposed a conceptual model to address social isolations in a way similar to social index which can assist the elders to perceive and maintain their own social network with others whom have been previously strong ties. However, we found some drawbacks in Morris’s study in display, function, cost, etc; therefore we proposed a novel social network platform attempting to display one personal social situation by using the simply behavioral feedback from the members in his/her social network. This platform includes the following properties: Addressing different information literacy and culture gap between two generations by integrating existing communication and VOIP (Voice over IP) application software into our platform, Allowing both online and offline communication, Displaying social feedback in the users’ screen directly. Finally, in our study, we will adopt the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) to validate the user’s acceptance in using our developed platform.

To fight against info-exclusion in an aging society, it is important to make website information available to all generations. If we want to achieve this goal we need to know the impact of not only age but also gender, educational background and frequency of internet use. Therefore, this paper presents the results of an explorative Dutch eye-tracking case study, which focuses on information search behaviour (navigation patterns and use of the search box, effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction). 29 younger and 29 older participants completed a search task on three websites. It was found that the greatest factor impacting on information search behaviour is not always age. In one case, heatmaps showed clearly that the navigation patterns of older participants using internet daily were quite similar to those of younger ones. Finally, I present some implications for organisations wanting to (re)design their own website.

Older people run the risk of being socially excluded due to the numerous barriers they need to overcome when interacting with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to perform an ever-increasing number of daily activities. This paper presents preliminary findings of a rapid ethnographical study, conducted with around 90 older people during 1 month, which aimed to explore the potential of geo-located ICT services to foster social inclusion and support independent living. This paper discusses potential scenarios of use for technologies that have largely been overlooked in HCI research with older people, such as Google Maps; key aspects of how they (want to) use these technologies and relevant interaction barriers that limit their interactions with them.

It is important for elderly people to be involved in local community to reduce the risk of being isolated. The authors are building a framework for encouraging elderly people to participate in more activities by providing local news that may be interesting. Nowadays, there is a lot of information on the Internet; however, few elderly people can obtain the benefits of this information. The Internet is used less by elderly people. It has been reported that one reason for this is diminishing cognitive performance. It is not easy for elderly people to learn a new mental model for a new IT system. Thus, the authors propose a robot-guided interaction framework for elderly people. Once the user initiates an interaction, a communication robot initiates the following interaction sequences. The user can simply follow and respond to the guiding robot, and is not required to learn any operational sequence or mental model. An experiment on such guiding robots was performed with ten elderly subjects, and investigated as to how long elderly people can use the system. As a result of a 12-day experiment, all subjects kept using the system almost every day until the end of the experiment period. According to this result, we can conclude that the robot-guided interaction framework is effective for elderly people.

In order to develop an appropriate social computing application for senior users, the salient point of this research was to explore social and physical environments of a senior living community and social interaction between aging residents, and to investigate the key factors of technology acceptance for those older adults with little or no computer knowledge. The next step was to give an appropriate alternative communication technology applicable to the elderly and their living milieu, and thereby enhance their social interaction. The area of study was also concerned with determining social communication, perceived ease of use, enjoyment, and satisfaction for the new digital social platform via the technology acceptance model.

As individuals live longer, the social structure is rapidly changing, resulting in problems such as shortages of medical resources and reduction of quality in healthcare services. Hence, this paper presents a telehealthcare system for user-friendly and long-term healthcare applications for older people suffering from metabolic syndrome. The system can transfer and manage medical data at a distance via a wireless sensor network. The integration of these technologies allows personal stand-alone vital data to become a total telehealthcare solution in home-level care.

In this paper we discuss preliminary findings from the first stage of our SEEDS study (SEEDS: An Organic Approach to Virtual Participatory Design), a collaborative research project between Universities of Dundee, Kent and Leeds, United Kingdom. This feasibility study investigates how to motivate older people to engage with digital technology, as well as how to improve understanding of older people’s needs and requirements amongst young designers. As part of this study we recorded interviews with older people which investigated their motivations to use or not use digital technologies and themes pertaining to their (dis)engagement. A virtual repository was created to make collected interviews, which were presented as social stories, available to engineering, technology and design students. In this paper we discuss the findings from a prototyping exercise with undergraduate and postgraduate students which took place in stage one at the Universities of Kent and Leeds.

Assessing the usability of products, interfaces and artefacts from an inclusive design perspective can widen cross-market acceptability and adoption, enhancing their potential commercial success. This paper is part of ongoing research that attempts to evaluate the design of existing products on the market, in terms of usability and learnability, with a view to improving these facets where deficiencies become apparent across user populations. Individuals were assessed according to the development of their product understanding during increased product exposure, providing concurrent protocol whilst product interaction occurred. The extent of participants’ technological familiarity was also investigated to determine how prior experience may affect product interaction performance. Age related differences were evident in both approaches to problem solving and extent of technological familiarity, and this also impacted overall interactional performance.

The aim of this paper is to report the analysis process adopted by an interdisciplinary team to understand human-product physical interaction in order to develop a PC workstation to be used by physically impaired people for their professional reintegration. In previous experiences [1] simple biomechanical measurements and electromyographic analysis were used to evaluate the physical stress connected to different workplace situations. In the present context we have chosen to apply to occupational ergonomics both a biomechanical and ethnographic approach and then correlate them in an integrated approach. The idea of merging qualitative and quantitative methods has become increasingly appealing in areas of applied research. As Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) and ergonomics are multifaceted issues it is important to approach them from different perspectives and to combine data coming from different methods. Multicompetence approach integrates different research methods into a research strategy [2] increasing the quality of final results and providing a more comprehensive understanding of the analyzed phenomena..

Visual maps deliver content in a simple and effective way. They can be useful for various purposes in areas such as street guidance, surrounding information, and education. However, sightless persons are unable to explore visual maps and risk being cut off from several multimedia Web applications. In this paper, starting from accessibility issues of map-based applications, we discuss possible interaction modalities and devices to use for truly achieving usage perspectives desired by blind people. New ways to interact with a mobile device (such as gestures or touch commands) and possible solutions for making a map truly effective are investigated. In order to better explain the issues and needs of blind users accessing visual maps, an example of an interaction is presented.

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and their families represent an untapped market for the cloud computing industry. There is a great need to develop alternative cloud-based care supports as traditional methods of care become more difficult to obtain. Contrary to some perspectives, many people with I/DD are capable of using cloud computing technology; they and their families are a viable consumer market. Advances in civil rights and self-determination principles regarding people with I/DD have secured their acknowledged position as a natural constituency of society; however, too often they are left out of consideration of social design. Excluding the needs of people with I/DD in cloud computing consideration, design and structure may put them at risk for further marginalization in human society. This paper discusses the profile of the global I/DD population, self-determination principles, and family perspectives of technology.

This paper explores patient-centered design (PCD) as a methodology for personalization of software used in rehabilitation of cognitive disabilities. This methodology serves scenarios where clinical priorities, expertise, and services can be factored into socio-technical software design decisions and clinicians explicitly included in the process. The clinical context anticipates the patient’s progress toward at least partial recovery and justifies clinical services. PCD builds on and integrates user-centered design (UCD) and participatory design (PD). Case studies come from work in traumatic brain injury rehabilitation.

In this paper, we propose the Relative Trajectory Information (RTI) measure, an information theoretic measure to evaluate mouse pointer trajectories. The measure is used to score the level of smoothness of mouse pointer trajectories. We show that, by leveraging Gaussian processes and information theory, RTI accounts for relative differences in timestamps of the mouse pointer trajectories. RTI also does not require explicit descriptions of targets, in either their location or size. Our experimental analysis shows how RTI can capture the motion signature of a user with severe motion disabilities and distinguish it from the motion signature of smooth trajectories obtained in a control experiment.

The aim of this paper is to compare two virtual keyboards for people with cerebral palsy; many of these users have difficulty performing actions using their upper limbs due to large numbers of unwanted movements. The first is a classical QWERTY type keyboard, called Clavicom NG. The second is the K-Hermes proposed in this paper. K-Hermes is a reduced and monotape keyboard; its entry principles are inspired by the T9 keyboard. The aim of the experiment is to demonstrate the reduced effort and increased speed of typing with the keyboard suggested for people with Cerebral Palsy.

An inexpensive sonification system of maps and charts for visually impaired is described. A digitiser (tablet) is used as system’s input device, which helps to investigate the map. The maps are presented using xml technology – mainly svg language tags. Then the maps from svg are converted to RGB bitmap. A system software is based on Microsoft .NET technology. Free Microsoft development systems as Visual C# 2008 Express Edition and Direct Sound are used to implement sonification system.

The ability to manage information and programs in the cloud, that is, on networked computers that users need not manage, offers potential opportunities for improved services for people with cognitive disabilities. Author Ward is a self advocate with experience in creating a Web site designed for people with disabilities, and in using the Web. Her experiences suggest what some of these opportunities are, and how they can be realized.

We discuss experiences employing a video-based mouse-replacement interface system, the Camera Mouse, at care facilities for individuals with severe motion impairments and propose adaptations of the system. Traditional approaches to assistive technology are often inflexible, requiring users to adapt their limited motions to the requirements of the system. Such systems may have static or difficult-to-change configurations that make it challenging for multiple users to share the same system or for users whose motion abilities slowly degenerate. As users fatigue, they may experience more limited motion ability or additional unintended motions. To address these challenges, we propose adaptive mouse-control functions to be used in our mouse-replacement system. These functions can be changed to adapt the technology to the needs of the user, rather than making the user adapt to the technology. We present observations of an individual with severe cerebral palsy using our system.

Crossword puzzles are a very popular word game, with high recreational and educational value, which can also be used as mental work-out tools, assisting in the prevention of age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Despite their high value and although users with visual impairments constitute an important market share, there are only few accessible crossword puzzles. Even these, however, are limited in providing alternative input and output modalities for users with disabilities and do not support equitable use, simplicity and intuitiveness, especially for blind users. This paper presents A-Cross, an accessible crossword puzzle for visually impaired users, aiming to support word solving in a novel and usable way. The evaluation process that was followed in order to assess the usability and accessibility of a functional yet early prototype of the A-Cross puzzle is also described.

World of Warcraft

TM

(WoW) is a virtual 3D game that offers much in terms of entertainment and collaboration and enjoys extraordinary world wide popularity. However like many other applications that deliver the majority of information visually, the default user interface (UI) is potentially only marginally accessible to users with limited visual acuity. This paper describes the enhanced user interface (UI) we constructed to improve accessibility for these users. We performed a study comparing the two user interfaces; users had simulated low visual acuity. The results of the study suggest that our enhanced UI led to significant improvements in user performance and speed of game play. Our current enhanced UI and planned future work have great potential for expanding opportunities for a user group to participate in the WoW community more fully than is possible with the current UI.

This work studies the usability of an audio and haptic-based virtual environment for learners with visual disabilities, intended for orientation and mobility purposes. To this end Audiopolis, a videogame for navigating a virtual city through interaction with audio and haptic interfaces, was designed and evaluated. Iconic and end-user usability evaluations of the videogame were administered. The results show that Audiopolis is highly usable and understandable for end users. An ongoing cognitive evaluation of navigation skills as a result of using Audiopolis is being implemented.

A public workshop was convened in the Fall of 2010 to bring together leaders from industry, education, public policy, disability advocacy, and government with a shared focus in shaping our national information and computing infrastructure to improve the lives and independence of people with disabilities, particularly those with cognitive disabilities. The workshop provided introductory presentations about the state and future of cloud computing technology, cognitive accessibility, and policy considerations, and was followed by interactive panel discussions about technical directions and opportunities; the potential benefits, opportunities, and challenges of cloud computing from the viewpoint of people with disabilities, caregivers, and advocates; and legal and regulatory barriers to accessing technology in “the cloud.” This paper summarizes insights about how cloud computing could improve the lives of people with disabilities from the perspective of leading representatives from industry, academe, government, and advocacy organizations.

Outdoor recreation websites present complex design considerations because of their wide range of potential users and the variety of their needs. Usability testing allows users to interact with websites and give feedback on its usability. Knowledge acquired during the usability testing process can be used to improve the information architecture of the website and its content. This study included usability tests with both visually-impaired and sighted participants visiting the Natural Resources Management Gateway, a complex information-rich website. The study identified best practices for designing and testing websites that effectively and efficiently meet the needs of visually-impaired and sighted website users. In addition to design recommendations, the study also looked at the impact of visual impairments on usability test duration, determining a rule of thumb for allocating time for usability testing of websites.

A computer with properly selected software provides aid in recreation of the disabled people. Its benefits are undisputable – assistance in individual physical, intellectual and psychical development. However, it seems that like in the able-bodied environment also here one should consider more or less conscious social isolation resulting from fascination by virtual world. It is more likely since the isolation is still fuelled by a problem of architectonic and psychological barriers that still exist in the environment and are not experienced in the cyberspace. The subject of presented research is a comparative analysis of sport-oriented behaviours of disabled young people against the background of trends related to the rapid development of computer games. The first part of the study discusses problems of active recreation in the Polish society and video games development directions with particular focus on the needs and restrictions of people with disabilities. The application section presents the research work targeted on the one hand to define the role of virtual competition of disabled youth in their everyday life and on the other, to check how it may jeopardize the health-oriented sports competition in the real world.

The research in the area of game accessibility has grown significantly since the last time it was examined in 2005. This paper examines the body of work between 2005 and 2010. We selected a set of papers on topics we felt represented the scope of the field, but were not able to include all papers on the subject. A summary of the research we examined is provided, along with suggestions for future work in game accessibility. It is hoped that this summary will prompt others to perform further research in this area.

Various kinds of method that decrease the language effects have been tried for understanding the spatial cognition of hard of hearing students. An experimental method and its application are proposed that uses a programming language in this article. The communication using a simple language and graphical interface is expected to give us a useful way for students’ understanding the question and expressing their ideas. The navigation problems in the experiments were built using the programming language. Operational indications of the subjects were described and collected using it as well. Comparable records of both hard of hearing and hearing students’ reactions were obtained and analyzed.

Accessibility and security are often depicted as conflicting aspirations. Accessible systems may be less secure and secure systems may be less accessible. The search is on for greater security for logging onto systems, whilst achieving acceptably high levels of accessibility. Pass-faces are based on the twin axioms of greater accessibility and security. A new user of a pass face system is asked to select “n” faces from an array of faces, where n is at least two and usually more. The user is required to memorize those faces and to recognize them again when represented to you as part of larger display. It has been suggested that this approach is less susceptible to poaching than are alphanumeric methods. There has been a considerable volume of work to evaluate the usage of pass face systems, but little work on the psychology of pass faces. Equally, pass face systems have received little attention from researchers in accessibility. In the present study, two previously unrelated themes were investigated in two experiments. First, are pass face systems acceptably usable? Second, how do pass face systems rely on the reliability of human face recognition memory? In two experiments, two types of pass face system consisting of (a) older faces; over 50 years of age and (b) younger faces; under 30 years of age were created. It turns out that younger participants are often better at recognizing younger faces than older faces in the context of pass face security, whilst older participants are sometimes better at recognizing older faces than younger faces in the context of pass face security. Thus an experiment that used only younger faces would falsely conclude that younger participants were better at face recognition memory than older participants in general. These results were checked and confirmed by literatures reviews of pass face security and human recognition memory for faces. These results show that universal access cannot be applied on a one-size-fits-all basis. They also suggest that the security-related disciplines of HCI and psychology would benefit from greater interaction between them.

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors contributing to affective climate in workplaces. To achieve the purpose, the paper-based questionnaire was employed. Two hundred and sixty-one participants participated in this study. A factor analysis with principal axis factoring extraction method and varimax rotation was employed and showed the eleven factors which were contribute to affective climate. T-test analysis showed that “Intimacy” and “Flexibility” factors were recognized as the most important factors to affective climate at work.

We build culture-specific dialogue policies of virtual humans for negotiation and in particular for argumentation and persuasion. In order to do that we use a corpus of non-culture specific dialogues and we build simulated users (SUs), i.e. models that simulate the behavior of real users. Then using these SUs and Reinforcement Learning (RL) we learn negotiation dialogue policies. Furthermore, we use research findings about specific cultures in order to tweak both the SUs and the reward functions used in RL towards a particular culture. We evaluate the learned policies in a simulation setting. Our results are consistent with our SU manipulations and RL reward functions.

This study analyzes joint interaction behaviors of two-person and four-person standing conversations from three different cultures, American, Arab, and Mexican. To determine whether people use joint interaction behaviors differently in multiparty versus dyadic conversation, and how differences in culture affect this relationship, we examine differences in proxemics, speaker and listener gaze behaviors, and overlap and pause at turn transitions. Our analysis suggests that proxemics, gaze, and mutual gaze to coordinate turns change with group size and with culture. However, these changes do not always agree with predictions from the research literature. These unanticipated outcomes demonstrate the importance of collecting and analyzing joint interaction behaviors.

The present study investigated the development of naturally occurring smiles in infancy and early childhood. Twelve to 35-month-old Japanese children (

N

= 22) were videotaped during free play time in nurseries. Participants expressed 417 smiles in over 10.5-hours of recording. A 11 category taxonomy was developed to classify the obtained smiles. The skills of language use were measured using utterance data produced by the target children while they were videotaped. One-year-olds showed more “transferring smiles” than two-year-olds. Whereas more “synchronous smiles” and “unsuccessful smiles” were observed in two-year-olds. “Unsuccessful smiles” were made by children who obtain higher language skills. This study established that the situations of smiles changed from solitary to social by children’s age and language skills. Two-year-olds smile not only in pleasant conditions, but also in unpleasant ones.

We experimentally investigated users’ reactions toward an on-screen agent appearing on three different types of media: a 42-inch television (120 cm away from participants), 17-inch display (80 cm), and 4.5-inch mobile PC (40 cm). Specifically, we observed whether the users accepted the agent’s invitation to a Shiritori game while they were engaged in given tasks. The results showed that most participants who received the invitation from the on-screen agent appearing on a 4.5-inch mobile PC accepted the agent’s invitation, while most participants did not accept the invitation from the agent appearing on the other two formats. We then investigated their reactions toward the agent the other situation; that is, appearing on 42-inch television (80 cm away), 17-inch display (40 cm) and 4.5-inch mobile PC (80 cm). The results showed that the participants still significantly accepted the invitation from the on-screen agent appearing on the 4.5-inch mobile PC from 40 cm away, and then clarified that both factors of the shorter distance from the agent and of the appropriate media type affected the participants behaviors whether they accepted or rejected the agents’ invitations.

Robotic telepresence offers a means to connect to a remote location via traditional telepresence with the added value of moving and actuating in that location. Recently, there has been a growing focus on the use of robotic telepresence to enhance social interaction among elderly. However for such technology to be accepted it is likely that the experienced presence when using such a system will be important. In this paper, we present results obtained from a training session with a robotic telepresence system when used for the first time by healthcare personnel. The study was quantitative and based on two standard questionnaires used for presence namely, the Temple Presence Inventory (TPI) and the Networked Minds Social Presence Intentory. The study showed that overall the sense of social richness as perceived by the users was high. The users also had a realistic feeling regarding their spatial presence.

The scope for the development of product design concerns several fields including cognitive meanings, symbolic functions and cultural histories of form. Through effective intervention of the culture identity design, the difference of the nationality will be decreased, the interaction between product and people will be improved, and the opportunities for cultural self-expression will be enhanced. The objective of this study mainly investigates the relationship between Chinese form and implied cultural image. The study applied the knowledge of culture identity design to enrich design semantics of a new product. In regard to develop more strategically culture identity design, a conceptual basis is needed to guide the understanding of traditional culture and support design making. In order to achieve the objective, this study partitions the knowledge into three principles including metaphor coding, traditional frame and decorative pattern. The three principles contain insights regarding how people perceive and think in such a Chinese culture environment. Designers can understand the principles of Chinese culture identity and apply the concept to design cultural creativity product.

With the growth of economic and the change of consumers’ needs, the museum gradually adopts the concept of experiential marketing. The guidance system has played an important experience media. Its development process of services model starts from “one-way standardization” and “passive customization”, to “active customization” and “personal adaptability”, trying to attract visitors by providing unforgettable and unique experience. This study integrated different scholars’ “experience” viewpoints and principles, utilizing design innovation to develop recommendation and guidance systems of content displaying, which consists three man-machine systems, four databases and three core techniques. Furthermore, this study established violin exhibition as an example to descript the “actively customized and recommended displaying content” innovative experience model of “artificial intelligence people” and “invisible encircling”.

People’s needs for products that provide

affective experience

have kept growing. Some previous researches have investigated the relationship between product design parameter and human affect, while others concerned about how to design affect-eliciting products. But there is still few researches clearly clarifying the essential elements that may evoke human affects. The purpose of this paper was to find the general factors contributing to the generation of human affects across countries. People’s narrative descriptions about things or experiences that elicited their affects were collected and compared to the elements extracted in the previous research to distill general elements across countries. To validate the elements extracted, a questionnaire-based investigation was then conducted in seven regions in the world. As a result, six general factors were derived from elements extracted using factor analysis and named as

affective factors

. The relationships between affect factors and affects were also validated using correlation analysis.

For the organizations that create technological products and services that provide users with affective experiences, viewpoints to deliberate affects of stakeholders are necessary in their management. Management that emphasizes its potential influences on affective experiences of stakeholders can be called as affective management. This paper argues the concepts, importance, and possible approaches of affective management.

The present article examined whether people’s experience of hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being in online shopping has been connected with their feeling in real life shopping activity. A questionnaire was used to assess hedonic and eudaimonic well-being of participants in online shopping and in its real life corresponding activity. The results indicated that there were two different types of participants along with their perceived usefulness towards online shopping. For those, who believed online shopping is more useful, well-being in online shopping and real life shopping were positively correlated. On the other hand, for people who considered real life shopping is more useful, well-being of online shopping and real life shopping were negatively correlated.

The human eye is an essential component in the communication between computers and their operators. For this reason, eye tracking technology provides a valuable perspective into HCI. This paper discusses three applications of eye tracking technology to the challenge of universal access. The first is the use of gaze-controlled systems that allow disabled users to operate computers and other modern technology. The second is the use of eye tracking as a research methodology to be used in designing interfaces that help to bridge the digital divide. The third is the use of eye data to examine cognitive attributes (i.e., workload, fatigue, etc.) of operators of complex systems as they complete critical tasks. Practical examples of each of the three applications are provided.

Human-machine interaction requires the ability to analyze and discern human faces. Due to the nature of the 3D to 2D projection, the recognition of human faces from 2D images, in presence of pose and illumination variations, is intrinsically an ill-posed problem. The direct measurement of the shape for the face surface is now a feasible solution to overcome this problem and make it well-posed. This paper proposes a completely automatic algorithm for 3D face registration and matching based on the extraction of stable 3D facial features characterizing the face and the subsequent construction of a signature manifold. The facial features are extracted by performing a continuous-to-discrete scale-space analysis. Registration is driven from the matching of triplets of feature points and the registration error is computed as shape matching score. A major advantage of the proposed method is that no data pre-processing is required. Despite of the high dimensionality of the data (sets of 3D points, possibly with the associate texture), the signature and hence the template generated is very small. Therefore, the management of the biometric data associated to the user data, not only is very robust to environmental changes, but it is also very compact. The method has been tested against the Bosphorus 3D face database and the performances compared to the ICP baseline algorithm. Even in presence of noise in the data, the algorithm proved to be very robust and reported identification performances in line with the current state of the art.

For this study a P300 BCI speller application framework served as a base to explore the operation for three different applications. Subjects exchanged messages in the networks of (i) Twitter (Twitter Inc.) and socialized with other residents in Second Life (Linden Lab) and (ii) controlled a virtual smart home. Although the complexity of the various applications varied greatly, all three applications yielded similar results which are interesting for the general application of BCI for communication and control: (a) icons can be used together with characters in the interface masks and (b) more crucially, the BCI system does not need to be trained on each individual symbol and allows the use of icons for many different tasks without prior time consuming and boring training for each individual icon. Hence such a type of BCI system is more optimally suited for goal oriented control amongst currently available BCI systems.

Our study explores how individuals communicate emotions using tactile hand gestures and provides evidence supporting the link between emotions and gestures to investigate the usability of tactile hand gestures for emotional online communication. Tactile hand gestures are used as the source of information to get to emotions. In this study, behavioral aspects of tactile hand gestures being used for emotional interaction are observed through a sensory input device and analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). In user experiments, subjects perform tactile hand gestures on the sensory input device in the response of a list of distinct emotions (i.e. excited, happy, relaxed, sleepy, tired, lonely, angry and alarmed). An analytical method is used to recognize gestures in terms of signal parameters such as intensity, temporal frequency, spatial frequency and pattern correlation. We found that different emotions are statistically associated with different tactile hand gestures. This research introduces a new way of creating online emotional communication devices that approximate the use of natural tactile hand gestures in face-to-face communication.

Gesture-based approaches are becoming an increasingly popular technique in Human Computer Interaction. Recent developments in the hardware field have made it more affordable and more reliable to use gesture-based interfaces and they are becoming more of a standard way for human users to interact with computers. Most of the research has been investigating the usage of gestures in personal and limited access situations. But gesture interfaces are promising great benefits to usage scenarios in public spaces or general access environments. This paper will summarize and evaluate the particular aspects of using gesture-based interfaces in application contexts in public and semi-public spaces.

In this paper, we consider two obstacles preventing widespread deployment of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology: the lack of standardization for the user interface and the applications interface. We suggest a structure for an intuitive graphical user interface (IGUI) and propose a methodology for usability testing. A universal application interface (UAI) based on Universal Plug and Play and deployed by Open Services Gateway initiative is proposed. This issues user commands and receives device status; and communicates to the IGUI using an eXtensible Mark-up Language file containing menu definitions. Using this approach we have achieved control of simple domestic devices, using ‘plug and play’ technology, interaction with a set top box and media player for entertainment applications.

This study deals with non-verbal behaviour in a video-recorded and manually annotated corpus of first encounters in Danish. It presents an analysis of head movements and facial expressions in the data, in particular their use to express feedback, and it discusses the results in the light of aspects of Danish culture that seem to privilege rather unconventional and non-emotional behaviour. The data provided can form the basis of multi-cultural studies where parallels are drawn to similar interactions in other languages.

To make human computer interfaces more immersive and intuitive, a new dimension could be added. Real-time brain state recognition from EEG including emotion recognition and level of concentration recognition would make an access to information more adaptive and personalized. Modern EEG techniques give us an easy and portable way to monitor brain activities by using suitable signal processing and classification methods and algorithms. We proposed a new subject-dependent fractal-based approach to brain state recognition and innovative applications based on EEG-enable user’s interaction. The algorithms of the “inner” brain state quantification including emotion recognition would advance research on human computer interaction bringing the proposed novel objective quantification methods and algorithms as new tools in medical, entertainment, and even digital art methodology applications, and allowing us an integration of the brain state quantification algorithms in the human computer interfaces. In this paper, we describe our fractal-based approach to the brain state recognition and its EEG-enable applications such as serious games, emotional avatar, music therapy, music player, and storytelling.

The research on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) is pushing hard to bring technologies out of the lab and into society and onto the market. The nascent merge between the field of BCI and human-computer interaction (HCI) is paving the way for new applications such as BCI-controlled gaming. The evaluation or success of BCI technologies is often based on how accurate the control of a user is with the technology. However, while this is still key to its usability, other factors that influence the user experience (UX) can make or break a technology. In this paper we first review studies which investigated user experience with BCIs. Second, we will discuss how HCI approaches can contribute to the evaluation of BCIs. Finally, we propose to develop a standardized questionnaire for evaluating BCIs for entertainment purposes.

The development of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) enters a phase in which these devices are no longer restricted to applications in controlled, single-task environments. For instance, BCIs for gaming or high-end operator stations will function as part of a multimodal user interface in a multitask environment. This phase introduces new issues that were not relevant for the development of the initial special-use applications and we should address these issues systematically. In this paper, we will present the potential conflicts and how models of information processing can help to cope with these. We will conclude with providing guidelines.

Fitts’ Law is a famous and highly satisfactory model to predict movement times in ergonomic studies. The original Fitts’ Law only considers one-dimensional movements. In the field of human-computer interaction however one has to deal with at least two dimensions. Due to inconsistency in previous research concerning the integration of the motion angle into the Fitts’ formulation, we investigated the influence of this factor on movement times and errors systematically. 30 subjects, separated in two age groups (younger: 21-36 years, elderly: 58-77 years) were tested in executing a pointing task on a large touch screen. The results reveal that the motion angle has a sinusoidal effect on the movement time for both age groups. Subsequently Fitts’ Law was refined by an additional summand which is an explicit sine function of the motion angle. Based on our findings we give practical recommendations where to arrange information elements on large touch screens.

The Adaboost with SVM-based component classifier is generally considered to break the Boosting principle for the difficulty in training of SVM and have imbalance between the diversity and accuracy over basic SVM classifiers. The Adaboost classifier in the paper trains SVM as base classifier with changing kernel function parameter

σ

value, which progressively reduces with the changes of weight value of training sample. To testify the validity of the classifier, the classifier is tested on human subjects to classify the left- and right-hand motor imagery tasks. The average classification accuracy reaches 90.2% on test data, which greatly outperforms SVM classifiers without Adaboost and commonly Fisher Linear Discriminant classifier. The results confirm that the proposed combination of Adaboost with SVM classifier may improve accuracy for classification of motor imagery tasks, and have applications to performance improvement of brain-computer interface (BCI) systems.

Eye typing, which utilizes eye gaze input to interact with computers, provides an indispensable means for people with severe disabilities to write, to talk, and to communicate. Despite more than two decades’ of research into eye typing (which, for the most part, focused on the hardware/technical aspects associated with implementing a system), there lacks a well designed solution that has incorporated the key research findings and integrated them into a unified system. Hence, we designed and developed a novel user interface AVIN (Assisted Visual Interactive Notepad) for eye writing that expedites the writing workflow to enhance the overall user experience. Our preliminary user testing results showed that a novice user can achieve 7 wpm with an hour’s typing practice, and a more experienced user can achieve 15 wpm with ten hours’ practice; whereas an expert user can only reach 6-8 wpm using the standard QWERTY design.

Brain computer interfaces (BCI) that use the steady-state-visual-evoked-potential (SSVEP) as neural source, offer two main advantages over other types of BCIs: shorter calibration times and higher information transfer rates. SSVEPs elicited by high frequency (larger than 30 Hz) repetitive visual stimulation are less prone to cause visual fatigue, safer, and more comfortable for the user. However in the high frequency range there is a practical limitation because only few frequencies can elicit sufficiently strong SSVEPs for BCI purposes. We bypass this limitation by using only one stimulation frequency and different phases. To detect the phase from the recorded SSVEP, we use spatial filtering combined to phase synchrony analysis. We developed an online BCI implementation which was tested on six subjects and resulted on an average accuracy of 95.5% and an average bit rate of 34 bits-per-minute. Our approach has the advantage of entailing only minimal visual annoyance for the user.