8,623 research outputs found
They want to tell us: Attention-aware Design and Evaluation of Ambient Displays for Learning
This paper explores the interaction between users and ambient displays and the evaluation thereof in a learning context. A formative design study examined the user attention towards ambient displays as well as the influence of different display designs. Experimental prototypes were varied on two design dimensions, namely representational fidelity and notification level, and deployed on a university campus. For the evaluation a combined approach using quantitative attention data as well as qualitative assessment methods was used. The results show a high degree of user interest in the displays over time, but do not provide clear evidence that the design of the displays influences the user attention. Nevertheless, the combination of quantitative and qualitative measurement does provide a more holistic view on user attention. The gathered insights can inform future designs and developments of ambient displays also beyond the learning context
NILMTK: An Open Source Toolkit for Non-intrusive Load Monitoring
Non-intrusive load monitoring, or energy disaggregation, aims to separate
household energy consumption data collected from a single point of measurement
into appliance-level consumption data. In recent years, the field has rapidly
expanded due to increased interest as national deployments of smart meters have
begun in many countries. However, empirically comparing disaggregation
algorithms is currently virtually impossible. This is due to the different data
sets used, the lack of reference implementations of these algorithms and the
variety of accuracy metrics employed. To address this challenge, we present the
Non-intrusive Load Monitoring Toolkit (NILMTK); an open source toolkit designed
specifically to enable the comparison of energy disaggregation algorithms in a
reproducible manner. This work is the first research to compare multiple
disaggregation approaches across multiple publicly available data sets. Our
toolkit includes parsers for a range of existing data sets, a collection of
preprocessing algorithms, a set of statistics for describing data sets, two
reference benchmark disaggregation algorithms and a suite of accuracy metrics.
We demonstrate the range of reproducible analyses which are made possible by
our toolkit, including the analysis of six publicly available data sets and the
evaluation of both benchmark disaggregation algorithms across such data sets.Comment: To appear in the fifth International Conference on Future Energy
Systems (ACM e-Energy), Cambridge, UK. 201
Exploring the importance of reflection in the control room
While currently difficult to measure or explicitly design for, evidence suggests that providing people
with opportunities to reflect on experience must be recognized and valued during safety-critical
work. We provide an insight into reflection as a mechanism that can help to maintain both individual
and team goals. In the control room, reflection can be task-based, critical for the 'smooth' day-to-day
operational performance of a socio-technical system, or can foster learning and organisational change
by enabling new understandings gained from experience. In this position paper we argue that
technology should be designed to support the reflective capacity of people. There are many
interaction designs and artefacts that aim to support problem-solving, but very few that support
self-reflection and group reflection. Traditional paradigms for safety-critical systems have focussed
on ensuring the functional correctness of designs, minimising the time to complete tasks, etc. Work
in the area of user experience design may be of increasing relevance when generating artefacts that
aim to encourage reflection
Testing QoE in Different 3D HDTV Technologies
The three dimensional (3D) display technology has started flooding the consumer television market. There is a number of different systems available with different marketing strategies and different advertised advantages. The main goal of the experiment described in this paper is to compare the systems in terms of achievable Quality of Experience (QoE) in different situations. The display systems considered are the liquid crystal display using polarized light and passive lightweight glasses for the separation of the left- and right-eye images, a plasma display with time multiplexed images and active shutter glasses and a projection system with time multiplexed images and active shutter glasses. As no standardized test methodology has been defined for testing of stereoscopic systems, we develop our own approach to testing different aspects of QoE on different systems without reference using semantic differential scales. We present an analysis of scores with respect to different phenomena under study and define which of the tested aspects can really express a difference in the performance of the considered display technologies
Real-Time Non-Intrusive Assessment of Viewing Distance During Computer Use
Purpose: To develop and test the sensitivity of an ultrasound-based sensor to assess the viewing distance of visual display terminals operators in real-time conditions.
Methods: A modified ultrasound sensor was attached to a computer display to assess viewing distance in real time. Sensor functionality was tested on a sample of 20 healthy participants while they conducted four 10-minute randomly presented typical computer tasks (a match-three puzzle game, a video documentary, a task requiring participants to complete a series of sentences, and a predefined internet search).
Results: The ultrasound sensor offered good measurement repeatability. Game, text completion, and web search tasks were conducted at shorter viewing distances (54.4 cm [95% CI 51.3-57.5 cm], 54.5 cm [95% CI 51.1-58.0 cm], and 54.5 cm [95% CI 51.4-57.7 cm], respectively) than the video task (62.3 cm [95% CI 58.9-65.7 cm]). Statistically significant differences were found between the video task and the other three tasks (all p < 0.05). Range of viewing distances (from 22 to 27 cm) was similar for all tasks (F = 0.996; p = 0.413).
Conclusions: Real-time assessment of the viewing distance of computer users with a non-intrusive ultrasonic device disclosed a task-dependent pattern.
(C) 2016 American Academy of OptometryPostprint (author's final draft
Wearable Computing for Health and Fitness: Exploring the Relationship between Data and Human Behaviour
Health and fitness wearable technology has recently advanced, making it
easier for an individual to monitor their behaviours. Previously self generated
data interacts with the user to motivate positive behaviour change, but issues
arise when relating this to long term mention of wearable devices. Previous
studies within this area are discussed. We also consider a new approach where
data is used to support instead of motivate, through monitoring and logging to
encourage reflection. Based on issues highlighted, we then make recommendations
on the direction in which future work could be most beneficial
DeepASL: Enabling Ubiquitous and Non-Intrusive Word and Sentence-Level Sign Language Translation
There is an undeniable communication barrier between deaf people and people
with normal hearing ability. Although innovations in sign language translation
technology aim to tear down this communication barrier, the majority of
existing sign language translation systems are either intrusive or constrained
by resolution or ambient lighting conditions. Moreover, these existing systems
can only perform single-sign ASL translation rather than sentence-level
translation, making them much less useful in daily-life communication
scenarios. In this work, we fill this critical gap by presenting DeepASL, a
transformative deep learning-based sign language translation technology that
enables ubiquitous and non-intrusive American Sign Language (ASL) translation
at both word and sentence levels. DeepASL uses infrared light as its sensing
mechanism to non-intrusively capture the ASL signs. It incorporates a novel
hierarchical bidirectional deep recurrent neural network (HB-RNN) and a
probabilistic framework based on Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC)
for word-level and sentence-level ASL translation respectively. To evaluate its
performance, we have collected 7,306 samples from 11 participants, covering 56
commonly used ASL words and 100 ASL sentences. DeepASL achieves an average
94.5% word-level translation accuracy and an average 8.2% word error rate on
translating unseen ASL sentences. Given its promising performance, we believe
DeepASL represents a significant step towards breaking the communication
barrier between deaf people and hearing majority, and thus has the significant
potential to fundamentally change deaf people's lives
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