Formal Verification of Plastic User Interfaces Exploiting Domain Ontologies

This paper presents a formal model to check the interaction plasticity on a user interface (UI). An interaction is seen as an implementation (achievement) of a user task by means of interaction devices and modes of a given platform. The interaction plasticity is the ability of UI to support several interactions to perform the same task. In this work, two task models, containing different sets of interactions, are observed to check if they describe interactions that perform the same task. Each task model is represented by a labelled state-transitions system (lts). Due to the use of different interaction modes and devices, the obtained lts have different set of labels. Weak bi-simulation relationship is revisited to handle these transition systems by defining a relation on labels. This relation is borrowed from an ontology of interaction modes and devices. Model checking techniques are set up to automatically establish such a bi-simulation. A case study is used to illustrate how the approach works

Premiers retours d'expérience sur l'utilisabilité et les usages de systèmes interactifs plastiques

International audienceThe Plasticity property has been introduced in 1999 in France to cope with the new variability of the context of use in ambient intelligence. A User Interface (UI) is said to be plastic if it is able to adapt to its context of use while preserving human-centered properties. Ten years later, theoretical as well as practical advances have been made. However, several questions related to usability and acceptability of plastic UIs need to be answered through evaluation with users. This paper presents a state of the art in plasticity and evaluation (methods and concerns). It describes three demonstrators and presents first results from evaluations led in laboratory and in the wild.La propriété de plasticité a été introduite en 1999 en France en réponse à une variabilité nouvelle du contexte d'usage en intelligence ambiante. Une Interface Homme-Machine (IHM) est dite plastique lorsqu'elle est douée d'adaptation à son contexte d'usage dans le respect de propriétés centrées utilisateur. Dix ans plus tard, les avancées sont certaines. On recense de nombreux résultats aussi bien théoriques que pratiques. Cependant, l'utilisabilité et l'acceptabilité des IHM plastiques soulèvent de nombreuses questions qui nécessitent la mise en œuvre d'évaluations auprès d'utilisateurs. Cet article présente l'état de l'art en plasticité et en évaluation (méthodes et difficultés). Il décrit trois démonstrateurs et présente les premiers retours d'évaluations menées en laboratoire et sur le terrain

Context-Adaptive Coordination of Pervasive Services by Interpreting Models during Runtime

[EN] One of the most important goals of pervasive systems is to help users in their daily life by automating their behaviour patterns. To achieve this, pervasive services must be dynamically coordinated, executed and adapted to context according to user behaviour patterns. In this work, we propose a model-driven solution to meet this challenge. We propose a task model and a context ontology to design context-adaptive coordination of services at a high level of abstraction. This design facilitates the coordination analysis at design time and is also reused at runtime. We propose a software architecture that interprets the models at runtime in order to coordinate the service execution that is required to support user behaviour patterns. This coordination is done in a context-adaptive way and decoupled from service implementation. This approach makes the models the only representation of service coordination, which facilitates the maintenance and evolution of the executed service coordination after deployment.This work has been developed with the support of (a) MICINN under the project EVERYWARE TIN2010-18011 and (b) MITYC under the project LIFEWEAR TSI-020400-2010-100 co-funded with ERDF.Serral Asensio, E.; Valderas Aranda, PJ.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2013). Context-Adaptive Coordination of Pervasive Services by Interpreting Models during Runtime. Computer Journal. 56(1):87-114. https://doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxs019S8711456

From Metamodeling to Automatic Generation of Multimodal Interfaces for Ambient Computing

International audiencehis paper presents our approach to design multichannel and multimodal applications as part of ambient intelligence. Computers are increasingly present in our environments, whether at work (computers, photocopiers), at home (video player, hi-fi, microwave), in our cars, etc. They are more adaptable and context-sensitive (e.g., the car radio that lowers the volume when the mobile phone rings). Unfortunately, while they should provide smart services by combining their skills, they are not yet designed to communicate together. Our results, mainly based on the use of a software bus and a workflow, show that different devices (such as Wiimote, multi-touch screen, telephone, etc.) can be coordinated in order to activate real things (such as lamp, fan, robot, webcam, etc.). A smart digital home case study illustrates how using our approach to design with ease some parts of the ambient system and to redesign them during runtime