A Comparison of Visualisation Methods for Disambiguating Verbal Requests in Human-Robot Interaction

Picking up objects requested by a human user is a common task in human-robot interaction. When multiple objects match the user's verbal description, the robot needs to clarify which object the user is referring to before executing the action. Previous research has focused on perceiving user's multimodal behaviour to complement verbal commands or minimising the number of follow up questions to reduce task time. In this paper, we propose a system for reference disambiguation based on visualisation and compare three methods to disambiguate natural language instructions. In a controlled experiment with a YuMi robot, we investigated real-time augmentations of the workspace in three conditions -- mixed reality, augmented reality, and a monitor as the baseline -- using objective measures such as time and accuracy, and subjective measures like engagement, immersion, and display interference. Significant differences were found in accuracy and engagement between the conditions, but no differences were found in task time. Despite the higher error rates in the mixed reality condition, participants found that modality more engaging than the other two, but overall showed preference for the augmented reality condition over the monitor and mixed reality conditions

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

Deuce: A Lightweight User Interface for Structured Editing

We present a structure-aware code editor, called Deuce, that is equipped with direct manipulation capabilities for invoking automated program transformations. Compared to traditional refactoring environments, Deuce employs a direct manipulation interface that is tightly integrated within a text-based editing workflow. In particular, Deuce draws (i) clickable widgets atop the source code that allow the user to structurally select the unstructured text for subexpressions and other relevant features, and (ii) a lightweight, interactive menu of potential transformations based on the current selections. We implement and evaluate our design with mostly standard transformations in the context of a small functional programming language. A controlled user study with 21 participants demonstrates that structural selection is preferred to a more traditional text-selection interface and may be faster overall once users gain experience with the tool. These results accord with Deuce's aim to provide human-friendly structural interactions on top of familiar text-based editing.Comment: ICSE 2018 Paper + Supplementary Appendice

Haptic Experience and the Design of Drawing Interfaces

Haptic feedback has the potential to enhance users’ sense of being engaged and creative in their artwork. Current work on providing haptic feedback in computer-based drawing applications has focused mainly on the realism of the haptic sensation rather than the users’ experience of that sensation in the context of their creative work. We present a study that focuses on user experience of three haptic drawing interfaces. These interfaces were based on two different haptic metaphors, one of which mimicked familiar drawing tools (such as pen, pencil or crayon on smooth or rough paper) and the other of which drew on abstract descriptors of haptic experience (roughness, stickiness, scratchiness and smoothness). It was found that users valued having control over the haptic sensation; that each metaphor was preferred by approximately half of the participants; and that the real world metaphor interface was considered more helpful than the abstract one, whereas the abstract interface was considered to better support creativity. This suggests that future interfaces for artistic work should have user-modifiable interaction styles for controlling the haptic sensation

An Integrated Mobile Application for Enhancing Management of Nutrition Information in Arusha Tanzania

Based on the fact that management of nutrition information is still a problem in many developing countries including Tanzania and nutrition information is only verbally provided without emphasis, this study proposes mobile application for enhancing management of nutrition information. The paper discusses the implementation of an integrated mobile application for enhancing management of nutrition information based on literature review and interviews, which were conducted in Arusha region for the collection of key information and details required for designing the mobile application. In this application, PHP technique has been used to build the application logic and MySQL technology for developing the back-end database. Using XML and Java, we have built an application interface that provides easy interactive view

An Investigation on Text-Based Cross-Language Picture Retrieval Effectiveness through the Analysis of User Queries

Purpose: This paper describes a study of the queries generated from a user experiment for cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) from a historic image archive. Italian speaking users generated 618 queries for a set of known-item search tasks. The queries generated by user’s interaction with the system have been analysed and the results used to suggest recommendations for the future development of cross-language retrieval systems for digital image libraries. Methodology: A controlled lab-based user study was carried out using a prototype Italian-English image retrieval system. Participants were asked to carry out searches for 16 images provided to them, a known-item search task. User’s interactions with the system were recorded and queries were analysed manually quantitatively and qualitatively. Findings: Results highlight the diversity in requests for similar visual content and the weaknesses of Machine Translation for query translation. Through the manual translation of queries we show the benefits of using high-quality translation resources. The results show the individual characteristics of user’s whilst performing known-item searches and the overlap obtained between query terms and structured image captions, highlighting the use of user’s search terms for objects within the foreground of an image. Limitations and Implications: This research looks in-depth into one case of interaction and one image repository. Despite this limitation, the discussed results are likely to be valid across other languages and image repository. Value: The growing quantity of digital visual material in digital libraries offers the potential to apply techniques from CLIR to provide cross-language information access services. However, to develop effective systems requires studying user’s search behaviours, particularly in digital image libraries. The value of this paper is in the provision of empirical evidence to support recommendations for effective cross-language image retrieval system design.</p

HILT IV : subject interoperability through building and embedding pilot terminology web services

A report of work carried out within the JISC-funded HILT Phase IV project, the paper looks at the project's context against the background of other recent and ongoing terminologies work, describes its outcome and conclusions, including technical outcomes and terminological characteristics, and considers possible future research and development directions. The Phase IV project has taken HILT to the point where the launch of an operational support service in the area of subject interoperability is a feasible option and where both investigation of specific needs in this area and practical collaborative work are sensible and feasible next steps. Moving forward requires detailed work, not only on terminology interoperability and associated service delivery issues, but also on service and end user needs and engagement, service sustainability issues, and the practicalities of interworking with other terminology services and projects in UK, Europe, and global contexts

HILT : High-Level Thesaurus Project. Phase IV and Embedding Project Extension : Final Report

Ensuring that Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) users of the JISC IE can find appropriate learning, research and information resources by subject search and browse in an environment where most national and institutional service providers - usually for very good local reasons - use different subject schemes to describe their resources is a major challenge facing the JISC domain (and, indeed, other domains beyond JISC). Encouraging the use of standard terminologies in some services (institutional repositories, for example) is a related challenge. Under the auspices of the HILT project, JISC has been investigating mechanisms to assist the community with this problem through a JISC Shared Infrastructure Service that would help optimise the value obtained from expenditure on content and services by facilitating subject-search-based resource sharing to benefit users in the learning and research communities. The project has been through a number of phases, with work from earlier phases reported, both in published work elsewhere, and in project reports (see the project website: http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/). HILT Phase IV had two elements - the core project, whose focus was 'to research, investigate and develop pilot solutions for problems pertaining to cross-searching multi-subject scheme information environments, as well as providing a variety of other terminological searching aids', and a short extension to encompass the pilot embedding of routines to interact with HILT M2M services in the user interfaces of various information services serving the JISC community. Both elements contributed to the developments summarised in this report