User interface guidelines for the control of interactive television systems via smart phone applications

International audienceThere are a growing number of smart phone applications allowing the user to control their television, set-top box or other entertainment devices. The success of these applications is limited. Based on findings from media studies in Austria and France focusing on how people currently use their TV and iTV systems and associated devices, this article describes recommendations for the design of a smart phone application enabling users to control Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) systems including all connected entertainment devices. Recommendations include the need to allow users to control devices that are related to the IPTV experience (not only the set-top box or television set) and the focus on scenarios of usage like supporting listening to music, enjoying a movie or controlling the connected home. Based on similarities and differences found in the two samples, future smart phone applications for controlling TV will only succeed if they provide meaningful functionalities that satisfy the (varying) user needs, support personalisation and personal usage and respect the limitations of mobile phones with respect to possible parallel activities performed

Characterizing Incidents Reporting Systems across Applications Domains

International audienceIncident reporting is a very well-known technique in application domains such as air traffic management and health, where specialized users are trained to provide detailed information about problems. Incident reporting systems are indeed complex systems that include many actors including the users reporting incidents, user’s colleagues and neighbors, stakeholders, policymakers, systems integrations. Incident report systems might change (positively or negatively) the users’ environment in many ways. In recent years, this kind of technique has been also been used in crisis management such as the hurricane Katrina. However, despite the fact that incident reporting systems using mobile technology are becoming more common, little is known about its actual use by the general population and which factors affect the user experience when using such system. In this paper we discuss the use of incident reporting system in critical context of use. In this paper we discuss the use of incident reporting system in several application domains. In particular we report findings in terms of dimensions that are aimed to identify social and technical aspects that can affect the design, development and use of incident reporting systems

Identifying user experience dimensions for mobile incident reporting in urban contexts

International audienceDespite the increasing interests raised by incident reporting systems, it is still unclear what dimensions of user experience (UX) and other contextual factors should be taken into account for the various stages of declaring an incident using mobile-phone applications. Research questions: How do citizens perceive and describe urban incidents? What UX dimensions are important for reporting an incident with a mobile-phone application? What other (contextual) factors are important from the users' point of view when declaring incidents? Which of the UX dimensions and contextual factors are important when in the various phases during an incident declaration? Literature review: Overall, there is a lack of empirical research in the domain of incident reporting. In general, the UX dimensions—visual and aesthetic experience, emotion, stimulation, identification, meaning and value, and social relatedness/coexperience—are important when designing interactive systems. It also shows that incidents are related to the citizen's perception of the environment. Methodology: A triangulated method approach combining interviews, a survey of existing systems, and a model-based task analysis were applied. This allows us to present a generic task model for incident reporting with a detailed description of UX dimensions affected in the various subtasks. Results and conclusions: Our findings point out the effect of UX dimensions in the task engaged by users when reporting urban citizens. The overall UX is directly influenced by the perceived level of severity, inconvenience and involvement, the personal context, and the technological mobile context. We have found that while several UX dimensions are highly relevant, they are not equally distributed along the several subtasks that citizens engage when reporting incidents. This study shows that semistructured requirement interviews can provide information about UX dimensions and it highlights the importance of the identification of UX dimensions in early phases of the development process

Engineering for User Experience: An Interactive TV Case Study

This paper provides an experience report and position paper describing some subjective and personal insights we gained during the design and development of an interactive television application that had the enhancement of the overall user experience as the main target. Goal of this position paper is to point out practical experience that as simple lessons learned can help avoid that a project fails due to simple communication errors or role-specific different expectations

The bubble user interface: a tangible representation of information to enhance the user experience in IPTV systems

International audienceMedia consumption in the IPTV sector has changed over the past years and decades. It evolved from a linear viewing behavior on just one device, the TV with a few channels, to a connected home entertainment environment with multiple screens. Also user interfaces need to adapt to these new requirements and ensure a good user experience and meet the consumers' needs for natural, straightforward and pleasant method of interacting with their IPTV systems. We have developed a new kind of user interface as a tailor-made alternative to current list or grid menus in order to not only address current limitations of list and grid menus, but to offer a novel and unique way to interact with TV content that makes using an interactive system an event again

Designing for Collaborative Non-Driving-Related Activities in Future Cars:Fairness and Team Performance

With the gradual transition towards assisted and automated driving, the car will transform into a more social environment where passengers and drivers engage in Non-Driving-Related Activities (NDRA). To support collaboration among occupants in future vehicles, research suggests interactive systems controlled by several users at once. In this paper, we explore five concepts for the collaborative performance of NDRA with the use-case of music playlist creation. While prior work investigated the effect on social connectedness, we expand insights towards team performance and fairness. Results from a mixed-subject experiment (N=27) show that the concepts have major consequences on team performance and fairness. Certain concepts can promote or hinder coordination effectiveness and, in turn, impact intra-vehicular collaboration. Our observations also indicate that fairness is key to fostering social collaboration in AVs, while it does not naturally define a high team performance. Subsequently, we provide recommendations to guide future designs of collaborative NDRAs in vehicles.</p

Empowering Driver-Passenger Collaboration: Designing In-Car Systems with a focus on Social Connectedness, Fairness, and Team Performance

Driving a car can be difficult when it comes to distractions caused by operating the in-vehicle infotainment system (IVIS). In-car passengers often help with performing IVIS-related tasks. However, an IVIS is often not designed with a focus on task collaboration. In this article, we focus on how to design in-car systems with the goal to support collaboration between a driver and a front-seat passenger. Based on infotainment-oriented tasks, we initially explore five key collaborative control concepts by means of an IVIS which differ from each other in terms of the number of available IVIS screens (one or two), access to menus (restricted and unrestricted), and the nature of performing tasks in parallel or one after the other. Results from a simulator study with N = 16 pairs show significant effects of the concepts on social collaboration in terms of perceived social connectedness (measured with sub-dimensions connectedness, affiliation, belongingness, companionship), team performance (coordination effectiveness and team cohesion), and fairness. We found that especially a dedicated passenger IVIS screen empowers front-seat passengers, reduces power dynamics, supports fairness, and minimizes driver distraction (caused by interacting passengers). We discuss the implications of these findings and posit recommendations to design future IVIS in passenger cars with improved driver-passenger collaboration by explicitly designing for balanced power roles, situational awareness, active communication, and a balance between drivers’ privacy and trust toward the passenger. Additionally, we outline a systematic overview of future work to explore the research field of driver-passenger collaboration in more breadth and depth.</p

A Human Reliability Based Usability Evaluation Method for Safety-Critical Software

Recent years have seen an increasing use of sophisticated interaction techniques including in the field of safety critical interactive software [8]. The use of such techniques has been required in order to increase the bandwidth between the users and systems and thus to help them deal efficiently with increasingly complex systems. These techniques come from research and innovation done in the field of humancomputer interaction (HCI). A significant effort is currently being undertaken by the HCI community in order to apply and extend current usability evaluation techniques to these new kinds of interaction techniques. However, very little has been done to improve the reliability of software offering these kinds of interaction techniques. Even testing basic graphical user interfaces remains a challenge that has rarely been addressed in the field of software engineering [9]. However, the non reliability of interactive software can jeopardize usability evaluation by showing unexpected or undesired behaviors. The aim of this SIG is to provide a forum for both researchers and practitioners interested in testing interactive software. Our goal is to define a roadmap of activities to cross fertilize usability and reliability testing of these kinds of systems to minimize duplicate efforts in both communities

Game Jam [4Research]

International audienceRecent years have witnessed a rise in Game Jams - organized events to create playable prototypes in avery short time frame. Game Jams offer a unique and quick way to prototype games. Beyond that, we believe Game Jams can also be seen as a design research method, situated in the research-through-design tradition, to create knowledge in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. The goal of this Game Jam is thus twofold: first, participants will use the Game Jam approach to investigate a research question; second, participants can, through actual practice, identify advantages and disadvantages of Game Jams as a research method. Hereby the Game Jam workshop provides a unique opportunity for HCI practitioners and researchers to gain experience in applying gameoriented methods for research

Trends on engineering interactive systems: an overview of works presented in workshops at EICS 2019

Workshops are a great opportunity for identifying innovative topics of research that might require discussion and maturation. This paper summarizes the outcomes of the workshops track of the 11th Engineering Interactive Computing Systems conference (EICS 2019), held in Valencia (Spain) on 18-21 June 2019. The track featured three workshops, one half-day, one full-day and one two-days workshop, each focused on specific topics of the ongoing research in engineering usable and effective interactive computing systems. In particular, the list of discussed topics include novel forms of interaction and emerging themes in HCI related to new application domains, more efficient and enjoyable interaction possibilities associated to smart objects and smart environments, challenges faced in designing, developing and using interactive systems involving multiple stakeholders.- (undefined