Knowledge Management for Public Administrations: Technical Realizations of an Enterprise Attention Management System

The improvement of governments’ efficiency has gained great importance and validity especially in the current times of economic downturn. E-Government constitutes the most contemporary techno-managerial proposition in the track of possible interventions. The paper addresses, more specifically, empowerments necessitated by Public Administration (PA) organizations. Anchored on the needs of three real-life cases, the paper describes the conception and the realization of an IT artefact together with its methodological appeals aiming at improving information access and delivery and thus PAs’ decision making capacity. Our proposition constitutes a novel approach for managing users’ attention in knowledge intensive organizations which goes beyond informing a user about changes in relevant information towards proactively supporting the user to react on changes. The approach is based on an expressive attention model, which is realized by combining ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rules with ontologies. The technical realizations described in the paper constitute the underlying infrastructure of an Enterprise Attention Management System

Ethically Responsible Knowledge Organization Systems: Towards an Intercultural User Interface

International audiencePurpose/Thesis: This paper discusses the challenges of creating a theoretic framework within the context of an intercultural and ethically responsible knowledge organization system (KOS). Approach/Methods: First, the paper explores ethical and societal concerns linked to the development of KOS. Second, it illustrates a way to tackle this ethical factor by proposing an applicable architecture for intercultural interfaces which respects cultural diversity on a global scale. Results and conclusions: The author emphasizes the importance of opening up the notion of cultural inclusiveness, to weigh not only linguistic diversity but also other cultural and social aspects, such as geography, religious affiliations, tradition, historical elements, ethnic. This kind of approach should be attentive to intersectionality and cultural interoperability. Originality/Value: By addressing local circumstances, the author offers insights into essential approaches that take into account cultural diversity when designing KOS and access interfaces to knowledge

Knowing when to assist: Developmental issues in lifelong assistive robotics

Children and adults with sensorimotor disabilities can significantly increase their autonomy through the use of assistive robots. As the field progresses from short-term, task-specific solutions to long-term, adaptive ones, new challenges are emerging. In this paper a lifelong methodological approach is presented, that attempts to balance the immediate context-specific needs of the user, with the long-term effects that the robots assistance can potentially have on the users developmental trajectory

Designing and Implementing Embodied Agents: Learning from Experience

In this paper, we provide an overview of part of our experience in designing and implementing some of the embodied agents and talking faces that we have used for our research into human computer interaction. We focus on the techniques that were used and evaluate this with respect to the purpose that the agents and faces were to serve and the costs involved in producing and maintaining the software. We discuss the function of this research and development in relation to the educational programme of our graduate students

Study of the Importance of Adequacy to Robot Verbal and Non Verbal Communication in Human-Robot interaction

The Robadom project aims at creating a homecare robot that help and assist people in their daily life, either in doing task for the human or in managing day organization. A robot could have this kind of role only if it is accepted by humans. Before thinking about the robot appearance, we decided to evaluate the importance of the relation between verbal and nonverbal communication during a human-robot interaction in order to determine the situation where the robot is accepted. We realized two experiments in order to study this acceptance. The first experiment studied the importance of having robot nonverbal behavior in relation of its verbal behavior. The second experiment studied the capability of a robot to provide a correct human-robot interaction.Comment: the 43rd Symposium on Robotics - ISR 2012, Taipei : Taiwan, Province Of China (2012

Balancing the power of multimedia information retrieval and usability in designing interactive TV

Steady progress in the field of multimedia information retrieval (MMIR) promises a useful set of tools that could provide new usage scenarios and features to enhance the user experience in today s digital media applications. In the interactive TV domain, the simplicity of interaction is more crucial than in any other digital media domain and ultimately determines the success or otherwise of any new applications. Thus when integrating emerging tools like MMIR into interactive TV, the increase in interface complexity and sophistication resulting from these features can easily reduce its actual usability. In this paper we describe a design strategy we developed as a result of our e®ort in balancing the power of emerging multimedia information retrieval techniques and maintaining the simplicity of the interface in interactive TV. By providing multiple levels of interface sophistication in increasing order as a viewer repeatedly presses the same button on their remote control, we provide a layered interface that can accommodate viewers requiring varying degrees of power and simplicity. A series of screen shots from the system we have actually developed and built illustrates how this is achieved