User-Interface Modelling for Blind Users

The design of a user interface usable by blind people sets specific usability requirements that are unnecessary for sighted users. These requirements focus on task adequacy, dimensional trade-off, behaviour equivalence, semantic loss avoidance and device-independency. Consequently, the development of human-computer interfaces (HCI) that are based on task, domain, dialog, presentation, platform and user models has to be modified to take into account these requirements. This paper presents a user interface model for blind people, which incorporates these usability requirements into the above HCI models. A frame-work implementing the model has been developed and implemented in an electronic speaking bilingual software environment for blind or visually impaired people and in an educational system for children with special educational needs

Distributed schema-based middleware for ambient intelligence environments

In this work we present a middleware developed for Ambient Intelligence environments. The proposed model is based on the blackboard metaphor, which is logically centralized but physically distributed. Although it is based on a data-oriented model, some extra services have been added to this middle layer to improve the functionality of the modules that employ it. The system has been developed and tested in a real Ambient Intelligence environment.This work was partially funded by ASIES (Adapting Social & Intelligent Environments to Support people with special needs), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación – TIN2010-17344, e-Madrid (Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid) S2009/ TIC-1650 and Vesta (Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, TSI-020100-2009-828) projects

Collaborative explicit plasticity framework: a conceptual scheme for the generation of plastic and group-aware user interfaces

The advent of new advances in mobile computing has changed the manner we do our daily work, even enabling us to perform collaborative activities. However, current groupware approaches do not offer an integrating and efficient solution that jointly tackles the flexibility and heterogeneity inherent to mobility as well as the awareness aspects intrinsic to collaborative environments. Issues related to the diversity of contexts of use are collected under the term plasticity. A great amount of tools have emerged offering a solution to some of these issues, although always focused on individual scenarios. We are working on reusing and specializing some already existing plasticity tools to the groupware design. The aim is to offer the benefits from plasticity and awareness jointly, trying to reach a real collaboration and a deeper understanding of multi-environment groupware scenarios. In particular, this paper presents a conceptual framework aimed at being a reference for the generation of plastic User Interfaces for collaborative environments in a systematic and comprehensive way. Starting from a previous conceptual framework for individual environments, inspired on the model-based approach, we introduce specific components and considerations related to groupware

A monitoring approach for runtime service discovery

Effective runtime service discovery requires identification of services based on different service characteristics such as structural, behavioural, quality, and contextual characteristics. However, current service registries guarantee services described in terms of structural and sometimes quality characteristics and, therefore, it is not always possible to assume that services in them will have all the characteristics required for effective service discovery. In this paper, we describe a monitor-based runtime service discovery framework called MoRSeD. The framework supports service discovery in both push and pull modes of query execution. The push mode of query execution is performed in parallel to the execution of a service-based system, in a proactive way. Both types of queries are specified in a query language called SerDiQueL that allows the representation of structural, behavioral, quality, and contextual conditions of services to be identified. The framework uses a monitor component to verify if behavioral and contextual conditions in the queries can be satisfied by services, based on translations of these conditions into properties represented in event calculus, and verification of the satisfiability of these properties against services. The monitor is also used to support identification that services participating in a service-based system are unavailable, and identification of changes in the behavioral and contextual characteristics of the services. A prototype implementation of the framework has been developed. The framework has been evaluated in terms of comparison of its performance when using and when not using the monitor component

Multi-Device Design in Contexts of Interchange and Task Migration

Com a miniaturização dos componentes digitais e o vasto desenvolvimento tecnológico dos últimos anos, a sociedade tem presenciado a redefinição dos "computadores pessoais" pelo advento dos dispositivos móveis. Além da inovação, eles introduziram o desafio do design multi-dispositivo para as aplicações desktop. Enquanto algumas abordagens criaram interfaces móveis sem aproveitar qualquer modelo, outras buscaram adaptações automáticas visando reduzir a sobrecarga de designo Em ambas, o foco do design deixou de ser o usuário, tornando as interfaces tão diferentes ao ponto de comprometerem a usabilidade na realização de uma mesma tarefa em vários dispositivos. Esta tese afirma que não existe uma abordagem de design multi-dispositivo capaz de garantir boa usabilidade em todos os contextos porque o usuário pode escolher apenas uma forma de acesso à aplicação ou alternar seu uso por meio de vários dispositivos. No primeiro caso, o usuário aprende a usar a interface para realizar suas tarefas, sendo relevante uma abordagem que aproveite os recursos do dispositivo e trate suas limitações. No segundo, o usuário já conhece uma das interfaces, o que gera uma expectativa no uso das demais. Logo, é necessário combinar abordagens com objetivos diferentes para atender ao usuário de acordo com o seu contexto de uso. Neste sentido, propõe-se o design multi-dispositivo por meio da preservação de uma hierarquia de prioridades de consistência definida em três níveis. Enquanto os dois primeiros dão suporte à expectativa do usuário em contextos de uso alternado (propensos à execução de tarefas em dispositivos diferentes) e migração de tarefas (iniciando tarefas com um dispositivo e concluindo com outro), o terceiro nível garante a personalização das tarefas de maior interesse visando eficiência e satisfação de uso em um dispositivo específico. A avaliação desta metodologia foi feita por meio de um experimento com três interfaces de pocket PC construídas a partir de uma aplicação desktop do domínio de Educação a Distância: a primeira delas era uma réplica da original (Migração Direta), a segunda não mantinha consistência de layout e era baseada em um processo de design personalizado adequado ao dispositivo (Linear) e a terceira aplicava apenas os dois primeiros níveis da hierarquia de prioridades (Overview). Os resultados da avaliação subjetiva mostraram que a abordagem Overview foi capaz de manter o modelo mental do usuário com maior precisão por preservar os atributos de facilidade, eficiência e segurança de uso na interação inter-dispositivo. Além disso, os resultados medidos para a eficácia (exatidão das respostas) e eficiênciá (tempo médio de execução das tarefas) foram iguais ou melhores com essa abordagem. Por outro lado, os usuários revelaram uma preferência pela personalização de tarefas presente na abordagem Linear. Este resultado dá suporte à proposta desta tese, mostrando que a eficácia gerada pelos dois primeiros níveis da hierarquia de prioridades (percepção e execução das tarefas) deve ser combinada com o terceiro nível de personalização. Para isso, sugere-se a disponibilização de padrões de interface criados pelo designer para escolha do usuário durante a interação. Essa combinação deve garantir usabilidade no acesso a uma aplicação feito sempre por um mesmo dispositivo ou em contextos de uso alternado e migração de tarefasWith the miniaturization of digital components and the vast technological development of the past years, society has remarked the redefinition of "personal computers" by the advent of modern mobile devices. Besides the innovation, these handhelds also introduced the challenge to develop multi-device interfaces for today's desktop applications. While some created mobile interfaces from scratch to get the best from the devices, others looked for automatic adaptations to reduce the load imposed to the designeI. In both cases, the user wasn't the focus anymore, which resulted interfaces so different from each other to the point of compromising usability when peHorming one task on many devices. This thesis claims that there is no multi-device approach capable to provi de full usability in every context because the user may choose only one interface to access the application or interchange its use via many devices. In the first case, the user learns to perform tasks with the given device, which makes relevant an approach that takes advantage of its resources and solves its limitations. In the second, the user already knows one of the available interfaces, which generates an expectation for the others. Therefore, it is necessary to combine approaches with different goals and suit the user according to the appropriate context. In this sense, we propose multi-device design via maintenance of a consistency priorities hierarchy defined in three levels. The first two levels give support to the user's expectation in contexts of interchange (prone to task execution with different devices) and task migration (starting tasks with one device and finishing with other). On the other side, the third level provides task personalization according to the user's interest towards higher efficiency and satisfaction of use with a specific device. The evaluation of this methodology was conducted by an experiment with three pocket PC interfaces designed from an e-learning desktop application: the first interface was an exact replica of the original desktop version (Direct Migration), the second didn't maintain layout consistency and was based in a personalized design process adequate to the device (Linear) while the third applied only the first two levels of the consistency priorities hierarchy (Overview). The subjective evaluation results pointed the Overview approach as the best to maintain the user's mental model by preserving easiness, efficiency and safety of use on inter-device interaction. Additionally, both measured efficacy (task result accuracy) and efficiency (task execution mean time) were the same or even better with this approach. On the other hand, users revealed their preference for the task personalization present in the Linear approach. This result gives support to our proposal, corroborating that the efficacy generated by the first two levels of the consistency priorities hierarchy (task perception and execution) should be combined with the third level of personalization. This could be done by letting designers create interface patterns and make them available to users during interaction. Such combination should guarantee usability while constantly accessing one application through the same device or in contexts of alternated use and task migratio

Separation of Concerns in Mobile Hypermedia: Architectural and Modeling Issues

Building Mobile Hypermedia and Web Applications is hard because of the myriad of concerns we need to face, such as those related to the specific application domain and those typical of mobile software. During the last years, we have been researching on modelling techniques for mobile hypermedia, and building infrastructure support for this and other kind of mobile and context aware software. In this chapter, we review the modelling features, design mechanisms and architectural support that we have developed to simplify the development process, and to obtain more flexible models and applications

Organization-Stakeholder Interaction Through Social Media: A Tri-level Investigation, Categorization, and Research Agenda

The increasing proliferation of social media use by organizations has amplified the need to address the means by which organizations can utilize this new form of communication most effectively. Social media offer organizations enhanced abilities to communicate with outside stakeholders, made possible through unique communication characteristics and an increased level of communicative connectivity. This dissertation advances our understanding of organization-stakeholder communication by investigating the phenomenon across three levels. At the global level, we present a categorization of interaction behaviors, with prescriptions for researching each category across three research perspectives. At the organizational level, we utilize three case studies to describe how different organizations can implement social media uniquely, differentiated by the degree of emphasis on regulated or empowered communications. At the individual level, we examine the motivating factors which influence an individual\u27s desire to use a personal technology (such as social media) for a work-related purpose. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on organizational social media use in two forms. For practice, we explicate numerous mechanisms which both enable and advance the use of social media for stakeholder interaction. The three essays uniquely describe how organizations can increase the effectiveness of social media interaction strategies. For research, we extend the current understanding of the phenomenon through a detailed, tri-level investigation. Our findings break some new ground into the utilization of social media and motivate future research on this new form of communication

Structured approaches to interaction design : a way to bridge the gap between the results of foundational user research and the final design of a user interface

The present manuscript-based doctoral thesis addresses the question of how approaches to interaction design can be made more structured. This is an attempt to make it more transparent how one can come to a final design of a user interface starting from the results of foundational user research. The results of this analysis can help designers to work very systematic at times, to better reflect on their own idiosyncratic design process “on the job”, or to learn interaction design in the first place. In user-centered design (UCD) there are lifecycles and methods that already provide a certain degree of structuring with the discrimination of different phases etc. But they leave open some gaps here and there. This work is an attempt to close some of the gaps and bring closer together these individual methods. Interaction design patterns are a way to describe solutions to problems in designing user in-terfaces in a very systematic way. However, pattern libraries usually are far from complete. They mostly lack patterns to support the early phases of interaction design and therefore they do usually not link to the abstract models of conceptual design. The third manuscript describes an organizational scheme for interaction design patterns to support the process of implementing a complete pattern language covering all the different levels of the solution domain. The scheme has been found by analyzing several established UCD lifecycles and it has been evaluated by organizing all the individual patterns of several public pattern libraries into it. The first manuscript describes a process of systematically building up a pattern language alongside of a redesign project of a complex application in a corporate environment. The second manuscript describes how patterns have been evaluated in the aforementioned project, when there were several different solutions for one problem. This is shown with two interaction design patterns for the problem of making required input fields visible to users. The fourth manuscript is an attempt to bring together the idea of a complete pattern language, as a description of the solution domain of interaction design, with the different parts of the problem domain. Therefore, the same UCD lifecycles (as in the third manuscript) have been analyzed to find a universal structure of the problem domain. Then all the mappings between the individual parts of the two domains have been described in order to link the two domains in this direct way. Another way of looking at the gap between the problem domain and the solution domain is by seeing it as a distance of levels of abstraction between results of foundational user research and the final user interface. From this point of view a bridging of the gap can be seen in different intermediate representations (abstract models, sketches, and prototypes) and linking them together in a coherent way. These different ways of bridging the gap between foundational user research and the final design of a user interface can be seen as cognitive artifacts to foster problem solving and learning of interaction designers