Image Recognition Techniques for in a Mobile Public Interactive Display

This paper describes a system which runs on a mobile phone that allows for the distribution of media packages to users with Bluetooth enabled camera phones. Users take photographss of specially designed posters and send them, using Bluetooth, to the system. An algorithm that enables the system to recognize the user images is developed, evaluated and modified using two rounds of user experiments. The final algorithm is found to correctly recognize the image photographed 87% of the time

Designing Attention-Centric Notification Systems: Five HCI Challenges

Through an examination of the emerging domain of cognitive systems, with a focus on attention-centric cognitive systems used for notification, this document explores the human-computer interaction challenges that must be addressed for successful interface design. This document asserts that with compatible tools and methods, user notification requirements and interface usability can be abstracted, expressed, and compared with critical parameter ratings; that is, even novice designers can assess attention cost factors to determine target parameter levels for new system development. With a general understanding of the user tasks supported by the notification system, a designer can access the repository of design knowledge for appropriate information and interaction design techniques (e.g., use of color, audio features, animation, screen size, transition of states, etc), which have analytically and empirically derived ratings. Furthermore, usability evaluation methods, provided to designers as part of the integrated system, are adaptable to specific combinations of targeted parameter levels. User testing results can be conveniently added back into the design knowledge repository and compared to target parameter levels to determine design success and build reusable HCI knowledge. This approach is discussed in greater detail as we describe five HCI challenges relating to cognitive system development: (1) convenient access to basic research and guidelines, (2) requirements engineering methods for notification interfaces, (3) better and more usable predictive modeling for pre-attentive and dual-task interfaces, (4) standard empirical evaluation procedures for notification systems, and (5) conceptual frameworks for organizing reusable design and software components. This document also describes our initial work toward building infrastructure to overcome these five challenges, focused on notification system development. We described LINK-UP, a design environment grounded on years of theory and method development within HCI, providing a mechanism to integrate interdisciplinary expertise from the cognitive systems research community. Claims allow convenient access to basic research and guidelines, while modules parallel a lifecycle development iteration and provide a process for requirements engineering guided by this basic research. The activities carried out through LINK-UP provide access to and interaction with reusable design components organized based on our framework. We think that this approach may provide the scientific basis necessary for exciting interdisciplinary advancement through many fields of design, with notification systems serving as an initial model. A version of this document will appear as chapter 3 in the book Cognitive Systems: Human Cognitive Models in Systems Design edited by Chris Forsythe, Michael Bernard, and Timothy Goldsmith resulting from a workshop led by the editors in summer 2003. The authors are grateful for the input of the workshop organizers and conference attendees in the preparation of this document

Establishing usability heuristics for heuristics evaluation in a specific domain: is there a consensus?

Heuristics evaluation is frequently employed to evaluate usability. While general heuristics are suitable to evaluate most user interfaces, there is still a need to establish heuristics for specific domains to ensure that their specific usability issues are identified. This paper presents a comprehensive review of 70 studies related to usability heuristics for specific domains. The aim of this paper is to review the processes that were applied to establish heuristics in specific domains and identify gaps in order to provide recommendations for future research and area of improvements. The most urgent issue found is the deficiency of validation effort following heuristics proposition and the lack of robustness and rigour of validation method adopted. Whether domain specific heuristics perform better or worse than general ones is inconclusive due to lack of validation quality and clarity on how to assess the effectiveness of heuristics for specific domains. The lack of validation quality also affects effort in improving existing heuristics for specific domain as their weaknesses are not addressed

The Original Design

O presente relatório é referente ao trabalho desenvolvido em estágio na Empresa The Original Copy, mais precisamente no departamento de design, situado na Av. Do Brasil em Lisboa. Esta etapa foi realizada para a obtenção do Mestrado em Comunicação Estratégica Publicidade e Relações Públicas na Universidade da Beira Interior. Ao longo destes três meses, desenvolveram-se diversas atividades que são demonstradas ao longo do presente relatório. Todas estas atividades ajudaram ao estagiário a desenvolver-se a nível profissional, bem como a lidar com clientes de todas as faixas etárias, o que é bastante enriquecedor a nível profissional. O relatório está dividido em seis capítulos. O primeiro descreve a entidade, os seus valores, objetivos, a sua missão, a sua própria identidade visual, a sua política comunicacional e, ainda, uma análise SWOT da empresa e todas as características e serviços que existem disponíveis. No segundo capítulo, são abordadas as tarefas e atividades desenvolvidas em estágio. No terceiro capítulo, é abordado e explorado um tema sobre a identidade visual (de uma loja) e a sua influência, na compra e no consumidor. O quarto capítulo, aborda a aplicação de uma metodologia, para que sejam obtidas as respostas à pergunta de partida inicial e os seus respetivos resultados que são discutidos no capítulo seguinte. Finalizo este relatório com uma reflexão final, no último capítulo, onde estão expostas as dificuldades e problemas identificados ao longo do estágio, bem como algumas propostas de melhoria, que vão ao encontro de objetos de estudo, absorvidos ao longo do mestrado de Comunicação Estratégica.This report refers to the work carried out in the company The Original Copy, more precisely in the Design department, located at Av. Do Brasil in Lisbon. This stage was accomplished to obtain the Master in Strategic Communication Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Beira Interior. Over the course of these three months, a number of activities have been developed that will be demonstrated throughout this report. All these activities helped the trainee to develop professionally, as well as dealing with clients of all age groups, which was quite enriching at professional level. The report is divided into six chapters. The first describes the entity, its values, objectives, its mission, its own visual identity, its communication policy and also a SWOT analysis of the company and all the features and services that are available. In the second chapter, the tasks and activities developed on an internship will be addressed. In the third chapter, a theme about the visual identity (of a store) and its influence on the purchase and the consumer will be approached and explored. The fourth chapter will be the application of a methodology, to obtain the answers to the initial question and its respective results that will be discussed in the next chapter. I conclude this report with a final reflection, in the last chapter, where the difficulties and problems identified during the internship are exposed, as well as some improvement proposals, which go against study objects absorbed throughout the Strategic Communication Masters

How to improve team collaboration in an office environment with the help of large screen displays

Displays of various sizes and forms have found its way to the modern collaborative setting. The research community is interested in studying how such settings can be improved but there still exists a gap in defining what kind of displays are best for what purposes and what kind of cues would be suitable for a particular display. It is interesting to learn how well an application built for a small display can work on a larger one and how seamlessly such system can switch context between displays. For example, a PowerPoint Presentation, designed for desktop screens are normally manipulated with the help of a mouse. But when they are displayed on a larger screen, is there a possibility for it to adapt to the dynamics of the new system? And also, how can the screen designs be adapted based on the location of the display for e.g. in a public, semi-public and a private setting. The effect of proximity to the display also affects how users tend to interact with them. There is an increasing need to understand such possibilities from the user’s perspective and to devise new technologies for the betterment of collaborative meetings. This research reflects on a modern collaborative setting involving multiple displays and lists out the main pain points of using such systems and suggests design guidelines to overcome these. The outcome emerged from the study suggests that all collaborative settings should be built towards providing three main functions: Visibility, Flexibility and Involvement

Evidence Based Design of Heuristics: Usability and Computer Assisted Assessment

The research reported here examines the usability of Computer Assisted Assessment(CAA) and the development of domain specific heuristics. CAA is being adopted within educational institutions and the pedagogical implications are widely investigated, but little research has been conducted into the usability of CAA applications. The thesis is: severe usability problems exist in GAA applications causing unacceptable consequences, and that using an evidence based design approach GAA heuristics can be devised The thesis reports a series of evaluations that show severe usability problems do occur in three CAA applications. The process of creating domain specific heuristics is analysed, critiqued and a novel evidence based design approach for the design of domain specific heuristics is proposed. Gathering evidence from evaluations and the literature, a set of heuristics for CAA are presented. There are four main contributions to knowledge in the thesis: the heuristics; the corpus of usability problems; the Damage Index for prioritising usability problems from multiple evaluations and the evidence based design approach to synthesise heuristics. The focus of the research evolves with the first objective being to determine If severe usability problems exist that can cause users d?ffIculties and dissatisfaction with unacceptable consequences whitct using existing commercial CAA software applications? Using a survey methodology, students' report a level of satisfaction but due to low inter-group consistency surveys are judged to be ineffective at eliciting usability problems. Alternative methods are analysed and the heuristic evaluation method is judged to be suitable. A study is designed to evaluate Nielsen's heuristic set within the CAA domain and they are deemed to be ineffective based on the formula proposed by Hanson et al. (2003). Domain specific heuristics are therefore necessary and further studies are designed to build a corpus of usability problems to facilitate the evidence based design approach to synthesise a set of heuristics, in order to aggregate the corpus and prioritise the severity of the problems a Damage Index formula is devised. The work concludes with a discussion of the heuristic design methodology and potential for future work; this includes the application of the CAA heuristics and applying the heuristic design methodology to other specific domains