Investigating Communicability Issues in the Open Data Manipulation Flow

The open data movement advocates that public data should be available in electronic format and accessible via the Internet. As a consequence, large volumes of data have been made available in open data portals. To tackle the complexity and possible social impacts resulting from the overwhelming production, collection, processing of data, the Human-Data Interaction providing mechanisms for citizens to interact with data. In this paper, we explore the flow of open data manipulation, aiming to find problems in the application of the whole flow, in practice, by the citizens. We used the Semiotic Inspection Method to find communication breakdowns in the data collection and data visualization interfaces. The results pointed to some communicability problems such as non-intuitive interfaces, lack of tutorials, excessive difficulties in accessing platforms, inconsistent data, and limited resources. These problems make it difficult for citizens across the flow of open data manipulation

Exploring Visual Cues for Intuitive Communicability of Touch Gestures to Pre-kindergarten Children

© ACM, 2014. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM In Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (pp. 159-162). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2669485.2669523Pre-kindergarten children are becoming frequent users of multi-touch technology and, according to previous studies they are able to perform several multi-touch gestures successfully. However, they do not use these devices supervised at all times. Consequently, interactive applications for pre-kindergarteners need to convey their underlying design intent and interactive principles with respect to touch interaction. In this paper, we present and evaluate two approaches to communicate three different touch gestures (tap, drag and scale up) to pre-kindergarten users. Our results show, firstly, that it is possible to effectively communicate them using visual cues and, secondly, that an animated semiotic approach is better than an iconic one.Work supported by the MINECO (grant TIN2010-20488) and GVA VALi+d program (grant APOSTD/2013/013).Nácher Soler, VE.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2014). Exploring Visual Cues for Intuitive Communicability of Touch Gestures to Pre-kindergarten Children. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2669485.2669523SBaloian, N., Pino, J. A., and Vargas, R. Tablet gestures as a motivating factor for learning. In Proc. ChileCHI'13, (2013), 98--103.Hofmeester, K., and Wolfe, J. Self-revealing gestures: teaching new touch interactions in windows 8. In ACM CHI EA '12 (2012), 815--828Kähkönen, M. and Ovaska, S. Initial observations on children and online instructions. In Proc. IDC '06, (2006), 93.Lee, R. Gestures. http://gesturecons.com/.Levine, S.C., Huttenlocher, J., Taylor, A., and Langrock, A. Early sex differences in spatial skill. Developmental Psychology, 35, (1999) 940--949.McKnight, L. and Fitton, D. Touch-screen technology for children: Giving the Right Instructions and Getting the Right Responses. In Proc. IDC '10, ACM Press (2010), 238.Niemi, H. and Ovaska, S. Designing spoken instructions with preschool children. In Proc. IDC '07, (2007), 133.Prates, R.O., de Souza, C.S., and Barbosa, S.D.J. Methods and tools: a method for evaluating the communicability of user interfaces. Interactions 7, 1 (2000), 31--38.Rideout, V. Zero to Eight: Children's Media Use in America. Common Sense Media, 2011.Walter, R., Bailly, G. and Müller, J. StrikeAPose: Revealing Mid-Air Gestures on Public Displays. In Proc. ACM CHI'13 (2013), 841--850

Improving Pre-Kindergarten Touch Performance

© ACM, 2014. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM In Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (pp. 163-166). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2669485.2669498Multi-touch technology provides users with a more intuitive way of interaction. However, pre-kindergarten children, a growing group of potential users, have problems with some basic gestures according to previous studies. This is particularly the case of the double tap and long pressed gestures, which have some issues related to spurious entry events and time-constrained interactions, respectively. In this paper, we empirically test specific strategies to deal with these issues by evaluating off-the-shelf implementations of these gestures against alternative implementations that follow these guidelines. The study shows that the implementation of these design guidelines has a positive effect on success rates of these two gestures, being feasible their inclusion in future multi-touch applications targeted at pre-kindergarten children.This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National Strategic Program of Research and Projects TIN2010-20488 (CREATEWORLD) and TIN2012-34003 (insPIre). This work is also supported by a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) to A. Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013).Nácher Soler, VE.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A.; Navarro, E.; González, P. (2014). Improving Pre-Kindergarten Touch Performance. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2669485.2669498SCouse, L.J. and Chen, D.W. A Tablet Computer for Young Children? Exploring Its Viability for Early Childhood Education. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 43, 1 (2010), 75--98.Harris, A., Rick, J., Bonnett, V., et al. Around the table: are multiple-touch surfaces better than single-touch for children's collaborative interactions? In Proc. CSCL'09, 335--344.Hoggan, E., Nacenta, M., Kristensson, P.O., Williamson, J., Oulasvirta, A., and Lehtiö, A. MultiTouch Pinch Gestures: Performance and Ergonomics. In Proc. ITS'13, 219--222.Hoggan, E., Williamson, J., Oulasvirta, A., Nacenta, M., Kristensson, P.O., and Lehtiö, A. Multi-Touch Rotation Gestures: Performance and Ergonomics. In Proc. CHI'13, 3--6.Nacenta, M.A., Baudisch, P., Benko, H., and Wilson, A. Separability of Spatial Manipulations in Multi-touch Interfaces. In Proc. GI'09, 175--182.Nacher, V., Jaen, J., Navarro, E., Catala, A., and González, P. Multi-touch gestures for pre-kindergarten children. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Available online http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2014.08.004Rideout, V. Zero to Eight: Children's Media Use in America. Common Sense Media, 2011.Smith, S.P., Burd, E., and Rick, J. Developing, evaluating and deploying multi-touch systems. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 70, 10 (2012), 653--656.Terra, D., Brinkman, W.P., and Heynderickx, I. Ease-ofUse and Enjoyment of Traditional vs. Stylus Input for Children in a Brazilian Primary School. LatinDisplay, (2009), 151--155

RE-DEFINING VERNACULAR ARCHITECTUREIN THIRD MILLENNIUM

The key purpose of this paper concerns the definition of vernacular architecture in third millennium; a topic which gives the impression of confusion from the beginning when it was a word in the book of Rudofsky. In redefining this term, supplementary conceptual issue will need to be focused briefly and the role of classification will need to be more generally because of an inextricably linked between these two matters. It may seem strange to raise such a basic question again about What is vernacular architecture? ; because, up till now, it needs to be addressed. There has been a major revitalization of interest in vernacular architecture, indicated by an ever increasing number of conferences, meetings, exhibitions and publications dealing with this subject. So far, strangely, the nature of what is being deliberated has been taken as self-evident and not tackled. There has been no reconsideration of what vernacular is, no definition either of the domain broadly or the subject matter specifically. During the discussion, this paper includes some design approaches and processes to clarify the technique which can be used to achieve an architectural building design addressed by vernacularism

On the role of domain ontologies in the design of domain-specific visual modeling langages

Domain-Specific Visual Modeling Languages should provide notations and abstractions that suitably support problem solving in well-defined application domains. From their user’s perspective, the language’s modeling primitives must be intuitive and expressive enough in capturing all intended aspects of domain conceptualizations. Over the years formal and explicit representations of domain conceptualizations have been developed as domain ontologies. In this paper, we show how the design of these languages can benefit from conceptual tools developed by the ontology engineering community

Extreme designing: binding sketching to an interaction model in a streamlined HCI design approach

ABSTRACT This paper presents a streamlined approach to human-computer interaction design called extreme designing. Extreme designing follows on the footsteps of agile methods and is analogous to extreme programming. However, it is not radically committed to "user interface coding" (sketching or prototyping alone), but instead proposes to combine user interface sketches with a more structured representation such as an interaction model. By doing so, it brings together the advantages of sketching and prototyping as a communication tool, and of interaction modeling as a glue that binds together the sketches to allow designers to gain a more comprehensive view of and to reflection on the interactive artifact, thus promoting a more coherent and consistent set of design decisions