Proceedings of the 3rd IUI Workshop on Interacting with Smart Objects

These are the Proceedings of the 3rd IUI Workshop on Interacting with Smart Objects. Objects that we use in our everyday life are expanding their restricted interaction capabilities and provide functionalities that go far beyond their original functionality. They feature computing capabilities and are thus able to capture information, process and store it and interact with their environments, turning them into smart objects

Optimizing Human Performance in Mobile Text Entry

Although text entry on mobile phones is abundant, research strives to achieve desktop typing performance "on the go". But how can researchers evaluate new and existing mobile text entry techniques? How can they ensure that evaluations are conducted in a consistent manner that facilitates comparison? What forms of input are possible on a mobile device? Do the audio and haptic feedback options with most touchscreen keyboards affect performance? What influences users' preference for one feedback or another? Can rearranging the characters and keys of a keyboard improve performance? This dissertation answers these questions and more. The developed TEMA software allows researchers to evaluate mobile text entry methods in an easy, detailed, and consistent manner. Many in academia and industry have adopted it. TEMA was used to evaluate a typical QWERTY keyboard with multiple options for audio and haptic feedback. Though feedback did not have a significant effect on performance, a survey revealed that users' choice of feedback is influenced by social and technical factors. Another study using TEMA showed that novice users entered text faster using a tapping technique than with a gesture or handwriting technique. This motivated rearranging the keys and characters to create a new keyboard, MIME, that would provide better performance for expert users. Data on character frequency and key selection times were gathered and used to design MIME. A longitudinal user study using TEMA revealed an entry speed of 17 wpm and a total error rate of 1.7% for MIME, compared to 23 wpm and 5.2% for QWERTY. Although MIME's entry speed did not surpass QWERTY's during the study, it is projected to do so after twelve hours of practice. MIME's error rate was consistently low and significantly lower than QWERTY's. In addition, participants found MIME more comfortable to use, with some reporting hand soreness after using QWERTY for extended periods

Report from Dagstuhl Seminar 23031: Frontiers of Information Access Experimentation for Research and Education

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 23031 ``Frontiers of Information Access Experimentation for Research and Education'', which brought together 37 participants from 12 countries. The seminar addressed technology-enhanced information access (information retrieval, recommender systems, natural language processing) and specifically focused on developing more responsible experimental practices leading to more valid results, both for research as well as for scientific education. The seminar brought together experts from various sub-fields of information access, namely IR, RS, NLP, information science, and human-computer interaction to create a joint understanding of the problems and challenges presented by next generation information access systems, from both the research and the experimentation point of views, to discuss existing solutions and impediments, and to propose next steps to be pursued in the area in order to improve not also our research methods and findings but also the education of the new generation of researchers and developers. The seminar featured a series of long and short talks delivered by participants, who helped in setting a common ground and in letting emerge topics of interest to be explored as the main output of the seminar. This led to the definition of five groups which investigated challenges, opportunities, and next steps in the following areas: reality check, i.e. conducting real-world studies, human-machine-collaborative relevance judgment frameworks, overcoming methodological challenges in information retrieval and recommender systems through awareness and education, results-blind reviewing, and guidance for authors.Comment: Dagstuhl Seminar 23031, report

Practical, appropriate, empirically-validated guidelines for designing educational games

There has recently been a great deal of interest in the potential of computer games to function as innovative educational tools. However, there is very little evidence of games fulfilling that potential. Indeed, the process of merging the disparate goals of education and games design appears problematic, and there are currently no practical guidelines for how to do so in a coherent manner. In this paper, we describe the successful, empirically validated teaching methods developed by behavioural psychologists and point out how they are uniquely suited to take advantage of the benefits that games offer to education. We conclude by proposing some practical steps for designing educational games, based on the techniques of Applied Behaviour Analysis. It is intended that this paper can both focus educational games designers on the features of games that are genuinely useful for education, and also introduce a successful form of teaching that this audience may not yet be familiar with

Modelling false positive reduction in maritime object detection

Target detection has become a very significant research area in computer vision with its applications in military, maritime surveillance, and defense and security. Maritime target detection during critical sea conditions produces a number of false positives when using the existing algorithms due to sea waves, dynamic nature of the ocean, camera motion, sea glint, sensor noise, sea spray, swell and the presence of birds. The main question that has been addressed in this research is how can object detection be improved in maritime environment by reducing false positives and promoting detection rate. Most of Previous work on object detection still fails to address the problem of false positives and false negatives due to background clutter. Most of the researchers tried to reduce false positives by applying filters but filtering degrades the quality of an image leading to more false alarms during detection. As much as radar technology has previously been the most utilized method, it still fails to detect very small objects and it may be applied in special circumstances. In trying to improve the implementation of target detection in maritime, empirical research method was proposed to answer questions about existing target detection algorithms and techniques used to reduce false positives in object detection. Visible images were retrained on a pre-trained Faster R-CNN with inception v2. The pre-trained model was retrained on five different sample data with increasing size, however for the last two samples the data was duplicated to increase size. For testing purposes 20 test images were utilized to evaluate all the models. The results of this study showed that the deep learning method used performed best in detecting maritime vessels and the increase of dataset improved detection performance and false positives were reduced. The duplication of images did not yield the best results; however, the results were promising for the first three models with increasing data

Modelling false positive reduction in maritime object detection

Target detection has become a very significant research area in computer vision with its applications in military, maritime surveillance, and defense and security. Maritime target detection during critical sea conditions produces a number of false positives when using the existing algorithms due to sea waves, dynamic nature of the ocean, camera motion, sea glint, sensor noise, sea spray, swell and the presence of birds. The main question that has been addressed in this research is how can object detection be improved in maritime environment by reducing false positives and promoting detection rate. Most of Previous work on object detection still fails to address the problem of false positives and false negatives due to background clutter. Most of the researchers tried to reduce false positives by applying filters but filtering degrades the quality of an image leading to more false alarms during detection. As much as radar technology has previously been the most utilized method, it still fails to detect very small objects and it may be applied in special circumstances. In trying to improve the implementation of target detection in maritime, empirical research method was proposed to answer questions about existing target detection algorithms and techniques used to reduce false positives in object detection. Visible images were retrained on a pre-trained Faster R-CNN with inception v2. The pre-trained model was retrained on five different sample data with increasing size, however for the last two samples the data was duplicated to increase size. For testing purposes 20 test images were utilized to evaluate all the models. The results of this study showed that the deep learning method used performed best in detecting maritime vessels and the increase of dataset improved detection performance and false positives were reduced. The duplication of images did not yield the best results; however, the results were promising for the first three models with increasing data

Realisierung und Evaluierung von Interaktionskonzepten für elektronische Fragebögen auf Smartwatches

Der Begriff Tinnitus bezeichnet Töne oder Geräusche, die eine Person wahrnimmt, jedoch keiner äußeren physikalischen Quelle zugeordnet werden können. Der subjektive Tinnitus wird nur vom betroffenen Menschen wahrgenommen und kann mit Messgeräten nicht erfasst und aufgezeichnet werden. Das TrackYourTinnitus Projekt dient zur Erfassung und Aufzeichnung dieser krankheitsbedingten, subjektiven Lautstärkeschwankungen. Zur Erfassung der Daten werden mobile Anwendungen für Smartphones eingesetzt, die den Projektteilnehmern zu bestimmten Zeitpunkten Fragebögen bereitstellen. Diese sollen von den Teilnehmern zeitnahe bearbeitet werden. Die erfassten Daten werden auf einem Server aufbereitet und gespeichert, sodass sie später unterstützend für die Behandlung von Patienten und nutzbringend für die Forschung eingesetzt werden können. Um die Akzeptanz der entwickelten mobilen Anwendungen zu steigern, soll in dieser Masterarbeit geprüft werden, ob sich Smartwatches für den Einsatz in einem Mobile Crowd Sensing System eignen. Hierfür wurde ein Umfragesystem mit Smartwatch Unterstützung implementiert. In die Smartwatch-Anwendung wurden verschiedene Eingabeformen zur Beantwortung von Fragen integriert. Die entwickelten Eingabeformen zielen auf eine komfortable Beantwortung von Umfragen über den Touchscreen und die integrierte Spracheingabe. Diese werden später in einer Studie auf ihre Tauglichkeit evaluiert. Für die Durchführung eines Vergleiches zwischen Smartwatch und Smartphone wurde zudem eine Smartphone- Anwendung implementiert. Ziel der Studie ist es, festzustellen ob der Einsatz von Smartwatches in einem Mobile Crowd Sensing System sinnvoll ist

Konzeption und Realisierung einer generischen Crowd-Sensing Anwendung für Android-TV

Crowd-Sensing-Systeme gibt es in verschiedenen Ausprägungen. Im Kern beabsichtigen alle Systeme die Sammlung von Daten. Die über eine Menschenmenge erhobenen Daten werden dazu verwendet, Aussagen über bisher unerforschte Gebiete der empirischen Sozialforschung zu ermöglichen. Sehr viele der Crowd-Sensing-Systeme werden über den Computer oder das Smartphone realisiert. Jedoch besitzen auch Smart-TV’s alle Anforderungen um ein solches System zu ermöglichen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird die Implementierung eines Crowd-Sensing-Systems basierend auf dem Betriebssystem Android TV beschrieben. Das für den Fernseher entwickelte Konzept beabsichtigt das komfortable Beantworten von Umfragen über die Fernbedienung. Neben diesem System wird ebenfalls die Implementierung einer vergleichbaren Smartphone-Anwendung beschrieben. Diese dient zur Durchführung einer Vergleichsstudie. Kern der Studie ist die Frage, ob sich der Smart-TV als Crowd- Sensing-System eignet

A Social Ecological Approach Towards Empowering Foster Youth to be Safer Online

Teens in foster care are some of the most vulnerable youth to encounter serious offline risks, such as sex trafficking. Research shows that children who are vulnerable offline are more likely to be vulnerable online. Therefore, it is important to understand how the internet plays a role in how foster youth are exposed to these risks, so that we may develop effective interventions that empower foster youth against becoming victims of these online risks. A comprehensive review of the literature (Chapter 2) emphasized the unique sets of characteristics and challenges of foster youth that create substantial nuance and require a deeper understanding beyond that of the general population. As such, my dissertation takes on a social ecological approach to adolescent online safety for foster youth by including the following three studies: 1) an interview study with 32 caseworkers that investigates how case managers work with foster families to address concerns of online safety (Chapter 3), 2) an interview study with 29 foster parents that examines how they mediate foster teens\u27 (ages 13-17) technology use at home and the types of risks the teens encounter online (Chapter 4), and 3) co-design sessions with 20 youth and semi-structured interviews with 13 parents to develop best practices for conducting research related to adolescent online risk behaviors, specifically those sexual in nature (Chapter 5). Our findings confirmed that online safety is a great challenge within foster families, particularly as it relates to sexual risks (e.g., unsafe sexual interactions with strangers). Further, case managers and foster parents do not receive the necessary training or guidance to handle situations related to online safety which prevents them from providing the appropriate resources to foster youth. Finally, our research highlighted the importance of focusing ethical practices beyond risk mitigation to protecting youth (e.g., providing help resources, like national crisis hotlines, during our studies could help teens navigate online risks independently)