Mobile phone interaction techniques for rural economy development - a review

Rural communities, especially in developing countries, are often neglected in terms of facilities and services that aid their social and economic development. This is evident even in software development processes, in that these groups of users or potential users’ are often not taken into consideration. The resultant effect is that they may not use it or use it sparingly. The objective of this study is to identify the various researches on interaction techniques and user interface design as a first step to the design of suitable mobile interactions and user interfaces for rural users. This research project is also aimed at socio-economic development and adding value to mobile phone users in Dwesa, a rural community in South Africa. This paper presents a literature survey of interaction techniques and user-interfaces. An analysis of the interaction techniques with respect to their suitability, availability of technologies, user capabilities for implementation in a rural context is discussed. Descriptive statistics of users’ current phones interaction facilities in the rural community which briefly illustrates users’ experiences and capabilities in different interaction modes is also presented.KEY WORDS: Interaction Techniques, Mobile phone, User Interface, ICT, Rural Development

Affective games:a multimodal classification system

Affective gaming is a relatively new field of research that exploits human emotions to influence gameplay for an enhanced player experience. Changes in player’s psychology reflect on their behaviour and physiology, hence recognition of such variation is a core element in affective games. Complementary sources of affect offer more reliable recognition, especially in contexts where one modality is partial or unavailable. As a multimodal recognition system, affect-aware games are subject to the practical difficulties met by traditional trained classifiers. In addition, inherited game-related challenges in terms of data collection and performance arise while attempting to sustain an acceptable level of immersion. Most existing scenarios employ sensors that offer limited freedom of movement resulting in less realistic experiences. Recent advances now offer technology that allows players to communicate more freely and naturally with the game, and furthermore, control it without the use of input devices. However, the affective game industry is still in its infancy and definitely needs to catch up with the current life-like level of adaptation provided by graphics and animation

User experience, performance, and social acceptability: usable multimodal mobile interaction

This thesis explores the social acceptability of multimodal interaction in public places with respect to acceptance, adoption and appropriation. Previous work in multimodal interaction has mainly focused on recognition and detection issues without thoroughly considering the willingness of users to adopt these kinds of interactions in their everyday lives. This thesis presents a novel approach to user experience that is theoretically motivated by phenomenology, practiced with mixed-methods, and analysed based on dramaturgical metaphors. In order to explore the acceptance of multimodal interfaces, this thesis presents three studies that look at users’ initial reactions to multimodal interaction techniques: a survey study focusing on gestures, an on-the-street user study, and a follow-up survey study looking at gesture and voice-based interaction. The investigation of multimodal interaction adoption is explored through two studies: an in situ user study of a performative interface and a focus group study using experience prototypes. This thesis explores the appropriation of multimodal interaction by demonstrating the complete design process of a multimodal interface using the performative approach to user experience presented in this thesis. Chapter 3 looks at users’ initial reactions to and acceptance of multimodal interactions. The results of the first survey explored location and audience as factors the influence how individuals behave in public places. Participants in the on-the-street study described the desirable visual aspects of the gestures as playful, cool, or embarrassing aspects of interaction and how gestures could be hidden as everyday actions. These results begin to explain why users accepted or rejected the gestures from the first survey. The second survey demonstrated that the presence of familiar spectators made interaction significantly more acceptable. This result indicates that performative interaction could be made more acceptable by interfaces that support collaborative or social interaction. Chapter 4 explores how users place interactions into a usability context for use in real world settings. In the first user study, participants took advantage of the wide variety of possible performances, and created a wide variety of input, from highly performative to hidden actions, based on location. The ability of this interface to support flexible interactions allowed users to demonstrate the the purposed of their actions differently based on the immediately co-located spectators. Participants in the focus group study discussed how they would go about placing multimodal interactions into real world contexts, using three approaches: relationship to the device, personal meaning, and relationship to functionality. These results demonstrate how users view interaction within a usability context and how that might affect social acceptability. Chapter 5 examines appropriation of multimodal interaction through the completion of an entire design process. The results of an initial survey were used as a baseline of comparison from which to design the following focus group study. Participants in the focus groups had similar motives for accepting multimodal interactions, although the ways in which these were expressed resulted in very different preferences. The desire to use technology in a comfortable and satisfying way meant different things in these different settings. During the ‘in the wild’ user study, participants adapted performance in order to make interaction acceptable in different contexts. In some cases, performance was hidden in public places or shared with familiar spectators in order to successfully incorporate interaction into public places

Linking recorded data with emotive and adaptive computing in an eHealth environment

Telecare, and particularly lifestyle monitoring, currently relies on the ability to detect and respond to changes in individual behaviour using data derived from sensors around the home. This means that a significant aspect of behaviour, that of an individuals emotional state, is not accounted for in reaching a conclusion as to the form of response required. The linked concepts of emotive and adaptive computing offer an opportunity to include information about emotional state and the paper considers how current developments in this area have the potential to be integrated within telecare and other areas of eHealth. In doing so, it looks at the development of and current state of the art of both emotive and adaptive computing, including its conceptual background, and places them into an overall eHealth context for application and development

A serious games platform for cognitive rehabilitation with preliminary evaluation

In recent years Serious Games have evolved substantially, solving problems in diverse areas. In particular, in Cognitive Rehabilitation, Serious Games assume a relevant role. Traditional cognitive therapies are often considered repetitive and discouraging for patients and Serious Games can be used to create more dynamic rehabilitation processes, holding patients' attention throughout the process and motivating them during their road to recovery. This paper reviews Serious Games and user interfaces in rehabilitation area and details a Serious Games platform for Cognitive Rehabilitation that includes a set of features such as: natural and multimodal user interfaces and social features (competition, collaboration, and handicapping) which can contribute to augment the motivation of patients during the rehabilitation process. The web platform was tested with healthy subjects. Results of this preliminary evaluation show the motivation and the interest of the participants by playing the games.- This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia in the scope of the projects: PEst-UID/CEC/00319/2015 and PEst-UID/CEC/00027/2015. The authors would like to thank also all the volunteers that participated in the study

Multimodal fusion : gesture and speech input in augmented reality environment

Augmented Reality (AR) has the capability to interact with the virtual objects and physical objects simultaneously since it combines the real world with virtual world seamlessly. However, most AR interface applies conventional Virtual Reality (VR) interaction techniques without modification. In this paper we explore the multimodal fusion for AR with speech and hand gesture input. Multimodal fusion enables users to interact with computers through various input modalities like speech, gesture, and eye gaze. At the first stage to propose the multimodal interaction, the input modalities are decided to be selected before be integrated in an interface. The paper presents several related works about to recap the multimodal approaches until it recently has been one of the research trends in AR. It presents the assorted existing works in multimodal for VR and AR. In AR, multimodal considers as the solution to improve the interaction between the virtual and physical entities. It is an ideal interaction technique for AR applications since AR supports interactions in real and virtual worlds in the real-time. This paper describes the recent studies in AR developments that appeal gesture and speech inputs. It looks into multimodal fusion and its developments, followed by the conclusion.This paper will give a guideline on multimodal fusion on how to integrate the gesture and speech inputs in AR environment

A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion