Neuro-cognitively inspired haptic user interfaces

Haptic systems and devices are a recent addition to multimodal systems. These devices have widespread applications such as surgical simulations, medical and procedural training, scientific visualizations, assistive and rehabilitative devices for individuals who have physical or neurological impediments and assistive devices for individuals who are blind. While the potential of haptics in natural human machine interaction is undisputable, the realization of such means is still a long way ahead. There are considerable research challenges to development of natural haptic interfaces. The study of human tactile abilities is a recent endeavor and many of the available systems still do not incorporate the domain knowledge of psychophysics, biomechanics and neurological elements of haptic perception. Development of smart and effective haptic interfaces and devices requires extensive studies that link perceptual phenomena with measurable parameters and incorporation of such domain knowledge in the engineering of haptic interfaces. This paper presents design, development and usability testing of a neuro-cognitively inspired haptic user interface for individuals who are blind. The proposed system design is inspired by neuro-cognitive basis of haptic perception and incorporates the computational aspects and requirements of multimodal information processing system. Usability testing of the system suggests that a biologically inspired haptic user interfaces may form a powerful paradigm for haptic user interface design.

The promise of zoomable user interfaces

Zoomable user interfaces (ZUIs) have received a significant amount of attention in the 18 years since they were introduced. They have enjoyed some success, and elements of ZUIs are widely used in computers today, although the grand vision of a zoomable desktop has not materialised. This paper describes the premise and promise of ZUIs along with their challenges. It describes design guidelines, and offers a cautionary tale about research and innovation.     

Towards automatic evaluation of multimodal user interfaces

The evaluation of the usability and the learnability of a computer system may be performed with predictive models during the design phase. It may be done on the executable code as well as by observing the user in action. In the latter case, data collected in vivo must be processed. The goal is to provide software supports for performing this difficult and time consuming task.

The paper presents an early analysis of, and experience relating to, the automatic evaluation of multimodal user interfaces. With this end in view, a generic Wizard of Oz platform has been designed to allow the observation and automatic recording of subjects' behavior while they interact with a multimodal interface. It is then shown how recorded data can be analyzed to detect behavioral patterns, and how deviations of such patterns from a data-flow-oriented task model can be exploited by a software usability critic.     

Distributed user interfaces in public spaces using RFID-based panels

The combination and integration of services between mobile computing and context-aware applications responds to the use of mobile devices defining a wide range of distributed user interfaces to support social activities. In this paper, we propose a novel solution that combines social software with context awareness to improve users' interaction in public spaces. This approach is based on the concept of collaborative interactive panels where users share their opinions and ideas about environmental issues by performing natural gestures. And so, taking advantage of physical resources already available in public spaces combined with the use of well-known technologies, such as mobile devices and RFID, we extend the concept of social software from the Web to physical public scenarios, such as bus stations, squares, etc. As an example, we present a case of study that encourage citizens' participation in decisions related to the community environmental issues reducing the gap between the social software and users.     

On tangible user interfaces,humans and spatiality

Like the prehistoric twig and stone, tangible user interfaces (TUIs) are objects manipulated by humans. Tangible user interface success will depend on how well they exploit spatiality, the intuitive spatial skills humans have with the objects they use. In this paper, we carefully examine the relationship between humans and physical objects, and related previous research. From this examination, we distill a set of observations and turn these into heuristics for incorporation of spatiality into TUI application design, a cornerstone for their success. Following this line of thought, we identify spatial TUIs, the subset of TUIs that mediate interaction with shape, space and structure. We then examine several existing spatial TUIs using our heuristics.     

Ubiquitous service access through adapted user interfaces on multiple devices

The Ubiquitous Interactor (UBI) addresses the problems of design and development that arise from services that need to be accessed from many different devices. In the UBI, a service can present itself with different user interfaces on different devices. This is done by a separation of the user–service interaction and presentation. The interaction is kept the same for all devices, and different presentation information is provided for different devices. This way, tailored user interfaces for many different devices can be created without multiplying the development and maintenance work. In this paper, we describe the design of the UBI, the system implementation, and two services implemented for the system: a calendar service and a stockbroker service.

Control centric approach in designing scrolling and zooming user interfaces

The dynamic systems approach to the design of continuous interaction interfaces allows the designer to use simulations, and analytical tools to analyse the behaviour and stability of the controlled system alone and when it is coupled with a manual control model of user behaviour. This approach also helps designers to calibrate and tune the parameters of the system before the actual implementation, and in response to user feedback. In this work we provide a dynamic systems interpretation of the coupling of internal states involved in speed-dependent automatic zooming, and test our implementation on a text browser on a Pocket PC instrumented with a tilt sensor. We illustrate simulated and experimental results of the use of the proposed coupled navigation and zooming interface using tilt and touch screen input.     

: a toolset for creating customized interfaces for grid user communities

is a comprehensive set of tools for creating customized graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It draws from the concept of computing portals, which are here seen as interfaces to application-specific computing services for user communities. While was originally designed for the use in computational grids, it can be used in client/server environments as well.Compared to other GUI generators, is more versatile and more portable. It can be employed in many different application domains and on different target platforms. With , application experts (rather than computer scientists) are able to create their own individually tailored GUIs.     

Selecting proper wireless network interfaces for user experience enhancement with guaranteed probability

With the increasing capabilities of mobile phones, mobile users access data via wireless interfaces pervasively. Although WiFi has limited coverage and resulted in a bigger delay of data access, it is not uncommon that mobile users are willing to use WiFi to transmit data to decrease communication costs instead of 3G. Hence it is reasonable to use delay tolerance strategies to balance execution time, energy consumption, and communication cost. In this paper, we model mobile user experience as a combination of three random variables (energy consumption, execution time and communication cost). We present a wireless interface scheduling algorithm to select proper wireless interfaces for a set of data-dependent sporadic tasks to enhance user experience under the constraints of execution time, energy consumption, and communication cost with a guaranteed confidence probability in a delay-tolerant environment. The experimental results show that our approach can effectively enhance the user experience.     

Modeling decisions under uncertainty in adaptive user interfaces

The present work proposes a methodological approach for modeling adaptation decisions and for solving the problem of integrating existing as well as acquired knowledge in the decision module of an adaptive interface. So far, most applications do not exploit in full the value of data originating from user models or knowledge acquisition engines that monitor the user and the context. The proposed decision theoretic model is represented through specifically structured influence diagrams. It provides to designers and developers a specific method to encode user and context information, as well as other crucial decision factors, to be subsequently used in the decision making process regarding user interface adaptation actions. Such a process is driven by the definition of relevant utilities referring to the design of a user interface. The proposed model guides designers and developers of an adaptive or intelligent interface to integrate, without conflicts and incoherence, design strategies, design goals, user goals, alternative constituents, user profile, context and application domain knowledge. An illustrative example of the analyzed modeling method is presented.

A multi-formalism approach for model-based dynamic distribution of user interfaces of critical interactive systems

Evolution in the context of use requires evolutions in the user interfaces even when they are currently used by operators. User Centered Development promotes reactive answers to this kind of evolutions either by software evolutions through iterative development approaches or at runtime by providing additional information to the operators such as contextual help for instance. This paper proposes a model-based approach to support proactive management of context of use evolutions. By proactive management we mean mechanisms in place to plan and implement evolutions and adaptations of the entire user interface (including behaviour) in a generic way. The approach proposed handles both concentration and distribution of user interfaces requiring both fusion of information into a single UI or fission of information into several ones. This generic model-based approach is exemplified on a safety critical system from space domain. It presents how the new user interfaces can be generated at runtime to provide a new user interface gathering in a single place all the information required to perform the task. These user interfaces have to be generated at runtime as new procedures (i.e. sequences of operations to be executed in a semi-autonomous way) can be defined by operators at any time in order to react to adverse events and to keep the space system in operation. Such contextual, activity-related user interfaces complement the original user interfaces designed for operating the command and control system. The resulting user interface thus corresponds to a distribution of user interfaces in a focus+context way improving usability by increasing both efficiency and effectiveness.     

To model objects in information systems and user interfaces: implications for object-oriented methods

Abstract. A general way of contrasting the object-oriented to the function-oriented approach, called 'object-order' and 'function-order', is proposed in this paper. In addition, when modelling information systems, there is a third principle of ordering, 'subject-order'. Object and function-order are used to define the two approaches to modelling information systems and in human-computer interaction, in ways that are compatible to the corresponding distinction in programming. The conditions for selecting either of the two approaches are, however, not discussed here.
By means of an object-ordered method, e.g. Jackson System Development (JSD), an object-ordered model is produced, and the user interface that can be derived from the model is object-ordered too. However, other guidelines in JSD support subject-order. A function-ordered interface can be derived from the subject-ordered model. A computer system designed by means of an object-organized method may therefore obtain an interface that is partially object-ordered and partially function-ordered. Other object-oriented methods give guidelines for designing function-oriented interfaces without relating these guidelines to the model.
The system designer may benefit from having three principles of ordering when modelling a system. However, a user may be confused by an interface that sometimes gives preference to objects, sometimes to functions.     

Toward the adaptation of component‐based architectures by model transformation: behind smart user interfaces

Graphical user interfaces are not always developed for remaining static. There are GUIs with the need of implementing some variability mechanisms. Component‐based GUIs are an ideal target for incorporating this kind of operations, because they can adapt their functionality at run‐time when their structure is updated by adding or removing components or by modifying the relationships between them. Mashup user interfaces are a good example of this type of GUI, and they allow to combine services through the assembly of graphical components. We intend to adapt component‐based user interfaces for obtaining smart user interfaces. With this goal, our proposal attempts to adapt abstract component‐based architectures by using model transformation. Our aim is to generate at run‐time a dynamic model transformation, because the rules describing their behavior are not pre‐set but are selected from a repository depending on the context. The proposal describes an adaptation schema based on model transformation providing a solution to this dynamic transformation. Context information is processed to select at run‐time a rule subset from a repository. Selected rules are used to generate, through a higher‐order transformation, the dynamic model transformation. This approach has been tested through a case study which applies different repositories to the same architecture and context. Moreover, a web tool has been developed for validation and demonstration of its applicability. The novelty of our proposal arises from the adaptation schema that creates a non pre‐set transformation, which enables the dynamic adaptation of component‐based architectures. Copyright © 2014 Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

User-centered approach to adaptive interfaces

Both adaptive and adaptable user interfaces are intended to fit the needs of individual users and their tasks better. A problem with these interfaces is that users must have and use additional knowledge, either to understand the automatic, system-driven adaptations or to adapt the interface on their own. Beyond these two extreme approaches, an automatically self-adapting system and a user manually adapting the system, the approach introduced in this paper strives for a third option, in which users are able to tell the system how to adapt itself. Accordingly, methods include adaptive adaptation (i.e. modifying the adaptation strategies) and implicit adaptation (i.e. changing the underlying models). The applicability of these findings is illustrated in the context of an adaptive action prompting environment.     

Intelligent Assistance in Authoring Dynamically Generated Web Interfaces

Since its emergence in the early 1990s, the WWW has become not only an information system of unprecedented size, but a universal platform for the development of services and applications. However, most of the advances in web technologies are intended for professional developers, paying poor attention to end-users with no programming abilities but with explicit needs of creating and customizing web-based presentations. This provides a strong motivation for end-users to act as designers at some point, leading to an emerging role of new computing-related professionals to be considered. This paper is an effort to leverage such difficulties by providing intelligent mechanism to assist end-users in web-based authoring tasks. To carry out such a challenge, intelligent user-monitoring techniques are exploited to obtain high-level information that will be used to infer the user’s preferences and assist him throughout the interaction. Furthermore, we report on how iteration patterns can be applied to avoid repetitive tasks that are automatically carried out on behalf of the user. In order to bring off a feasible trade-off between expressivity and ease of use, a user experiment to obtain the user’s perception and evaluate the hit-rate of our system is also presented.     

Designing peer-to-peer distributed user interfaces: Case studies on building distributed applications

Building a distributed user interface (DUI) application should ideally not require any additional effort beyond that necessary to build a non-distributed interface. In practice, however, DUI development is fraught with several technical challenges such as synchronization, resource management, and data transfer. In this paper, we present three case studies on building distributed user interface applications: a distributed media player for multiple displays and controls, a collaborative search system integrating a tabletop and mobile devices, and a multiplayer Tetris game for multi-surface use. While there exist several possible network architectures for such applications, our particular approach focuses on peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures. This focus leads to a number of challenges and opportunities. Drawing from these studies, we derive general challenges for P2P DUI development in terms of design, architecture, and implementation. We conclude with some general guidelines for practical DUI application development using peer-to-peer architectures.     

A rapid prototyping software infrastructure for user interfaces in ubiquitous augmented reality

Recent user interface concepts, such as multimedia, multimodal, wearable, ubiquitous, tangible, or augmented-reality-based (AR) interfaces, each cover different approaches that are all needed to support complex human–computer interaction. Increasingly, an overarching approach towards building what we call ubiquitous augmented reality (UAR) user interfaces that include all of the just mentioned concepts will be required. To this end, we present a user interface architecture that can form a sound basis for combining several of these concepts into complex systems. We explain in this paper the fundamentals of DWARFs user interface framework (DWARF standing for distributed wearable augmented reality framework) and an implementation of this architecture. Finally, we present several examples that show how the framework can form the basis of prototypical applications.     

Object-oriented specification of user interfaces

This paper presents an object-oriented approach for the specification of graphical user interfaces. Specification starts with the analysis of the end user's operations. The user interface is then designed on the basis of this analysis. Operation analysis is followed by structure and component specification which presents the dialogue structure of the application and the contents of each dialogue. Visualization produces the final screen layouts, and task specification documents the usage of the user interface for the purpose of creating user's guides. The method presented in this paper makes it easier for a designer to take the end user's needs into account. Still, it does not automatically guarantee good quality user interfaces. The top-down nature of the method allows the designer to concentrate on the most important aspects of the user interface and split the design procedure into manageable pieces. Also, the visibility of the process allows the designer to communicate with other people while specifying the user interface. This paper connects the method with the object-oriented specification of entire applications. It briefly explains the connections with object-oriented analysis and design, and demonstrates how to implement the specified user interface in an object oriented fashion. The approach presented in this paper is being applied in the development of a large network management system with about two million lines of C++ code running in the XII environment. Still, the method does not require the specification being implemented with any specific windowing system. The only requirement is that the user interface is based on graphical elements, such as dialogues, push-buttons and text fields.     

Providing RIA user interfaces with accessibility properties

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) technologies are challenging the way in which the Web is being developed. However, from the UI accessibility point of view, these technologies pose new challenges that the Web Accessibility Initiative of the W3C is trying to solve through the use of a standard specification for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA). Currently, the introduction of properties defined in WAI-ARIA is being done in an ad-hoc manner due to the lack of models, methodologies and tools to support the design of accessible RIA UIs. In this paper we propose a semantic approach to deal with this modeling issue by extending the RUX-Method, a model-based method to build RIA UIs. The approach includes the validation process of the accessibility issues at two different levels: the UI structure and the interactions behavior.     

On the role of individual human abilities in the design of adaptive user interfaces for scientific problem solving environments

A scientific problem solving environment should be built in such a way that users (scientists) might exploit underlying technologies without a specialised knowledge about available tools and resources. An adaptive user interface can be considered as an opportunity in addressing this challenge. This paper explores the importance of individual human abilities in the design of adaptive user interfaces for scientific problem solving environments. In total, seven human factors (gender, learning abilities, locus of control, attention focus, cognitive strategy and verbal and nonverbal IQs) have been evaluated regarding their impact on interface adjustments done manually by users. People’s preferences for different interface configurations have been investigated. The experimental study suggests criteria for the inclusion of human factors into the user model guiding and controlling the adaptation process. To provide automatic means of adaptation, the Intelligent System for User Modelling has been developed. Elena Zudilova-Seinstra is a Senior Researcher at the Scientific Visualisation and Virtual Reality Group of the University of Amsterdam. Previously, she worked for the Corning Scientific Centre. Apart from being a researcher, in 1999–2002 she was a part-time Assistant Professor at the St. Petersburg Academy of Management Methods and Techniques. She received her M.S. degree in technical engineering in 1993 and Ph.D. in computer science in 1998 from the St. Petersburg State Technical University. In 1996, she received an award for R&D from the Welles-Johnson Foundation of Maryland. She is a Program Committee Member of several International Conferences and Workshops. Her current research interests include multi-modal and adaptive interaction, scientific visualisation, virtual and augmented reality, ambient intelligence and usability studies. She has more than 40 research publications and three editorials in these areas. Also, she has been an INTAS evaluator since February 2005.