The Cognitive Atlas: Employing Interaction Design Processes to Facilitate Collaborative Ontology Creation

The Cognitive Atlas is a collaborative knowledge-building project that aims to develop an ontology that characterizes the current conceptual framework among researchers in cognitive science and neuroscience. The project objectives from the beginning focused on usability, simplicity, and utility for end users. Support for Semantic Web technologies was also a priority in order to support interoperability with other neuroscience projects and knowledge bases. Current off-the-shelf semantic web or semantic wiki technologies, however, do not often lend themselves to simple user interaction designs for non-technical researchers and practitioners; the abstract nature and complexity of these systems acts as point of friction for user interaction, inhibiting usability and utility. Instead, we take an alternate interaction design approach driven by user centered design processes rather than a base set of semantic technologies. This paper reviews the initial two rounds of design and development of the Cognitive Atlas system, including interactive design decisions and their implementation as guided by current industry practices for the development of complex interactive systems

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

Redesigning the jMetal Multi-Objective Optimization Framework

jMetal, an open source, Java-based framework for multi-objective optimization with metaheuristics, has become a valuable tool for many researches in the area as well as for some industrial partners in the last ten years. Our experience using and maintaining it during that time, as well as the received comments and suggestions, have helped us improve the jMetal design and identify significant features to incorporate. This paper revisits the jMetal architecture, describing its refined new design, which relies on design patterns, principles from object-oriented design, and a better use of the Java language features to improve the quality of the code, without disregarding jMetal ever goals of simplicity, facility of use, flexibility, extensibility and portability. Among the newly incorporated features, jMetal supports live interaction with running algorithms and parallel execution of algorithms.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Protein Design is a Key Factor for Subunit-subunit Association

Fundamental questions about the role of the quaternary structures are addressed using a statistical mechanics off-lattice model of a dimer protein. The model, in spite of its simplicity, captures key features of the monomer-monomer interactions revealed by atomic force experiments. Force curves during association and dissociation are characterized by sudden jumps followed by smooth behavior and form hysteresis loops. Furthermore, the process is reversible in a finite range of temperature stabilizing the dimer. It is shown that in the interface between the two monomeric subunits the design procedure naturally favors those amino acids whose mutual interaction is stronger. Furthermore it is shown that the width of the hysteresis loop increases as the design procedure improves, i.e. stabilizes more the dimer.Comment: submitted to "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA

THE PARADOX OF SIMPLICITY: EFFECTS OF USER INTERFACE DESIGN ON PERCEPTIONS AND PREFERENCE OF INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS

This ongoing research project is concerned with people’s perceptions regarding simplicity and complexity of user interface (UI) design of interactive systems. Human-computer interaction (HCI) experts suggest that simplicity is a key factor in enhancing system usability. According to this view, simplicity enables users to achieve their goals efficiently and effectively, and by that to enhance their satisfaction. Recent voices in the HCI community, however, have observed that people actually prefer complex interfaces to simpler ones (e.g., Norman, 2007). We refer to the gap between the observed behavior and the advocated design guidelines as the paradox of simplicity: whereas simplicity supposedly enhances performance and helps users achieve their goals, people actually seem to prefer complex designs. In this paper we propose a theoretical framework for the study of the simplicity paradox. Our model suggests that simplicity and complexity are potent signifiers that carry direct and indirect meaning and determine people\u27s choice of a system. The analysis relates to four main system attributes: functionality, usability, aesthetics and symbolism. We suggest that individual, cultural and context variables serve as moderators in determining people’s preference of complex or simple interfaces

Simplicity Characteristics Analysis of 20th Century Women’s Clothing using S-Polygon

Emotional simplicity is quite attractive in a modern life. Previous studies on clothing simplicity have described the visual simplicity of clothing with the characteristics of individual design elements such as lines, colors and textiles. However, the observer perceives the visual object from an integrated perspective not only from a detailed point of view. Therefore, a holistic approach to visual characteristics of clothing appearance is required. This study is a comprehensive a analysis of how the visual characteristics of 20th century western women’s clothing are expressed by the interaction of the simplicity factors that are components of S-Polygon. For this purpose, a total of 400 fashion images to represent each decade of 20th century was chosen from 11 published materials related to the history and culture of clothes as well as Internet sites that included samsungdesign.net, firstview.com, and redlist.com. Analyzing the visual characteristics of western women\u27s clothing in 20th century using the S-Polygon makes it possible to interpret changes in women\u27s clothing in terms of simplicity. And it is possible to understand the relationship between factors that constitute the visual simplicity of the clothing and to identify various characteristics of visual simplicity shown in clothing. A comparison and analysis between multiple designers in terms of simplicity, using the S-Polygon will make it possible to propose new ways to design

A methodology for the design and evaluation of user interfaces for interactive information systems

The definition of proposed research addressing the development and validation of a methodology for the design and evaluation of user interfaces for interactive information systems is given. The major objectives of this research are: the development of a comprehensive, objective, and generalizable methodology for the design and evaluation of user interfaces for information systems; the development of equations and/or analytical models to characterize user behavior and the performance of a designed interface; the design of a prototype system for the development and administration of user interfaces; and the design and use of controlled experiments to support the research and test/validate the proposed methodology. The proposed design methodology views the user interface as a virtual machine composed of three layers: an interactive layer, a dialogue manager layer, and an application interface layer. A command language model of user system interactions is presented because of its inherent simplicity and structured approach based on interaction events. All interaction events have a common structure based on common generic elements necessary for a successful dialogue. It is shown that, using this model, various types of interfaces could be designed and implemented to accommodate various categories of users. The implementation methodology is discussed in terms of how to store and organize the information

Sketching sonic interactions by imitation-driven sound synthesis

Sketching is at the core of every design activity. In visual design, pencil and paper are the preferred tools to produce sketches for their simplicity and immediacy. Analogue tools for sonic sketching do not exist yet, although voice and gesture are embodied abilities commonly exploited to communicate sound concepts. The EU project SkAT-VG aims to support vocal sketching with computeraided technologies that can be easily accessed, understood and controlled through vocal and gestural imitations. This imitation-driven sound synthesis approach is meant to overcome the ephemerality and timbral limitations of human voice and gesture, allowing to produce more refined sonic sketches and to think about sound in a more designerly way. This paper presents two main outcomes of the project: The Sound Design Toolkit, a palette of basic sound synthesis models grounded on ecological perception and physical description of sound-producing phenomena, and SkAT-Studio, a visual framework based on sound design workflows organized in stages of input, analysis, mapping, synthesis, and output. The integration of these two software packages provides an environment in which sound designers can go from concepts, through exploration and mocking-up, to prototyping in sonic interaction design, taking advantage of all the possibilities of- fered by vocal and gestural imitations in every step of the process

Plasmonic nanoparticle monomers and dimers: From nano-antennas to chiral metamaterials

We review the basic physics behind light interaction with plasmonic nanoparticles. The theoretical foundations of light scattering on one metallic particle (a plasmonic monomer) and two interacting particles (a plasmonic dimer) are systematically investigated. Expressions for effective particle susceptibility (polarizability) are derived, and applications of these results to plasmonic nanoantennas are outlined. In the long-wavelength limit, the effective macroscopic parameters of an array of plasmonic dimers are calculated. These parameters are attributable to an effective medium corresponding to a dilute arrangement of nanoparticles, i.e., a metamaterial where plasmonic monomers or dimers have the function of "meta-atoms". It is shown that planar dimers consisting of rod-like particles generally possess elliptical dichroism and function as atoms for planar chiral metamaterials. The fabricational simplicity of the proposed rod-dimer geometry can be used in the design of more cost-effective chiral metamaterials in the optical domain.Comment: submitted to Appl. Phys.

Fast audio-haptic prototyping with mass-interaction physics

International audienceThis paper presents ongoing work on the topic of physical modelling and force-feedback interaction. Specifically, it proposes a frame- work for rapidly prototyping virtual objects and scenes by means of mass-interaction models, and coupling the user and these objects via an affordable multi-DoF haptic device. The modelled objects can be computed at the rate of the haptic loop, but can also operate at a higher audio-rate, producing sound. The open-source design and overall simplicity of the proposed system makes it an interesting solution for introducing both physical simulations and force-feedback interaction, and also for applications in artistic creation. This first implementation prefigures current work conducted on the develop- ment of modular open-source mass-interaction physics tools for the design of haptic and multisensory applications