Model Assisted Creativity Sessions for the Design of Mixed Interactive Systems: a Protocol Analysis

Part 1: Long and Short Papers (Continued)International audienceTo help designers face the complexity of mixed interaction and identifying original and adapted solutions, we developed and evaluated an original approach to interaction design. This approach, called MACS, aims to combine the best elements of both a model of mixed interaction, and a collaborative and creative session. The objective is twofold: to support the exploration of the design space, and to establish a common language between participants. To assess the viability of this approach, we relied on a protocol analysis technique on the verbal recordings of two existing design situations. Results show that the model has a strong impact on the generation of ideas and that participants use the model concepts to share their thoughts during the session

An MDE-based framework to support the development of Mixed Interactive Systems

International audienceIn the domain of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), recent advances in sensors, communication technologies, miniaturization and computing capabilities have led to new and advanced forms of interaction. Among them, Mixed Interactive Systems (MIS), form a class of interactive systems that comprises augmented reality, tangible interfaces and ambient computing; MIS aim to take advantage of physical and digital worlds to promote a more transparent integration of interactive systems with the user's environment. Due to the constant change of technologies and the multiplicity of these interaction forms, specific development approaches have been developed. As a result, numerous taxonomies, frameworks, API and models have emerged, each one covering a specific and limited aspect of the development of MIS. To support a coherent use of these multiple development resources and contribute to the increasing popularity of MIS, we have developed a framework based on Model-Driven Engineering. The goal is to take advantage of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) standards, methodology and tools to support the manipulation of complementary Domain Specific Languages (DSL), to organize and link the use of different design and implementation resources, and to ensure a rationalized implementation based on design choices. In this paper, we first summarize existing uses of MDE in HCI before focusing on five major benefits MDE can provide in a MIS development context. We then detail which MDE tools and resources support these benefits and thus form the pillars of the success of an MDE-based MIS development approach. Based on this analysis, we introduce our framework, called Guide-Me, and illustrate its use through a case study. This framework includes two design models. Model transformations are also included to link one model to another; as a result the frameworks coverage extends from the earliest design step to a software component-based prototyping platform. A toolset based on Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) that supports the use of the framework is also presented. We finally assess our MDE-based development process for MIS based on the five major MDE benefits for MIS

Individualized Visits to Foster the Engagement and the re-visit in Museums

International audienceMuseums have become places that, besides conserving and storing artefacts, provide visitors with education and amusement. They now have to compete with the entertainment industry to attract visitors and expand their audience. The use of digital technology is emerging as a solution.While many studies focus on the visitor side, we are interested in tools for museum staff. To understand their needs and processes, we adopted a participatory and iterative design process, involving museum professionals as end-users at each step (i.e. user observation, design, prototyping, users tests). We conducted 7 meetings, 4 interviews studies and 2 experimental observations with 12 museum experts (communication, IT, public and content experts) from 5 institutions (Exhibition Centres, Science Centre, Archaeological Museum, Museum of Fine Arts).Our analysis revealed two issues faced by these museums. First, despite the recommendation of institutional documents, visitors service is almost never involved before the end of the exhibition design process. Thus, they have no mean to shape the scenography in order to adapt it to visitors. Second, we identified a strong need for encouraging local visitors’ engagement and revisit. Diversifying the visits is a solution considered by museums, but relying on temporary exhibits is too costly for small museums and creating thematic visits is not participatory enough.The creation of individualized visits, allowing visitors to explore existing exhibition on their own depending on their needs and desires, meets both challenges. We thus focus on the design of tools that empower museum professionals to create such visits. We identified that museums need, first, to collect more information about their visitors and, second, to be able to create, evolve and maintain the solutions on their own according to visitors needs. Our aim is to design a tool which respects these two key points and could enable the creation of personalized and dynamic museum visits

Guiding visitors in museums with calm interactions

We present two design solutions and an experimental platform that highlight the benefits of tangible interfaces in guiding visitors in museums while ensuring a better distribution of their attention between the exhibition and the guidance. We explore the use of the interactionattention continuum of Bakker et al. to design interfaces that allow the visitor to regulate his attention at different times of the visit. The Visiting Stick draws on the walking habits and the Marauder's Brochure extends the use of a recurring museum object, the visit brochure, by augmenting it with a dynamic display and various tactile and kinesthetic modalities. We have thus designed and built a physical experimental platform using several sensory channels: visual, audio and haptic (using heat, vibration and change of shape) to guide visitors. This platform will allow us in future work to compare the different modalities and their combination for guiding in the museum

Build Your Own Hercules : une interface tangible de choix de parcours de visites personnalisées au musée

National audienceIn this demonstration we present “Build your own Hercules”. This tangible token+constraint system allows museum visitors to indicate their characteristics and desires in order to choose a personalized visit. We designed this system in collaboration with Musée Saint-Raymond in Toulouse, which hosted a pilot study of the prototype in-situ.Dans cette démonstration, nous présentons « Build your own Hercules ». Ce système tangible de type token+constraint permet aux visiteurs d’un musée d’indiquer leurs caractéristiques et leurs envies afin de choisir une visite personnalisée. Nous avons conçu ce système en collaboration avec le musée Saint-Raymond de Toulouse, qui a accueilli une étude pilote du prototype

Méthode de Conception Assistée par les Modèles pour les Systèmes Interactifs Mixtes

Interactive systems slowly evolve to become more and more transparent through the merging of physical and digital entities. These advanced forms of interaction are known as augmented reality, tangible interfaces, mixed reality, or Mixed Interactive Systems (MIS). The emergence of these paradigms has a strong impact on the design of interactive systems. Indeed, it leads designers in the handling of more variables and in the exploration a broader design space. To face such a complexity, new formalisms emerged in order to express and describe the fundamentals of these systems. Despite these theoretical advances, in practice most of the design proposals remain limited to the same set of technologies and interaction techniques. In addition, the design methodologies used in traditional HCI do not face this exploration problem. Therefore, to contribute to MIS design, we propose an original approach called "Model Assisted Creativity Session" (MACS), combining a formal interaction model and a collaborative and creative design activity. This new methodology first aims at supporting a more systematic exploration of the design space through the manipulation of concepts expressed in formalism. Then, the objective is to ease collaboration by helping a multidisciplinary team in the construction of language of reference. Overall, the method aims at providing a shared representation between designers and to allow multidisciplinary teams to explore the design space to its most entrenched boundaries thus leading them to reach innovative and creative spaces. To reach this goal, we first identify a set of fundamental principles that describe the boundaries of such a method by analyzing the several paradigms collaborative and creative design and through a review of existing design resources in the field of MIS. Based on this review, we define the core principles of the MACS method. We then investigate to what extent non-MIS experts understand two formalisms of mixed interaction. After that, we describe a set of case studies and analyze the impact of using formalism during a design session through verbal and behavioral protocol analysis. This study shows that the MACS method help participants in focusing on the design problem, in making references to the concepts expressed by the notation for expressing ideas and guide the idea generation. We conclude the presentation of our work by illustrating several MIS designed with this method and by the introduction of an interactive tool aimed at supporting these collaborative and creative design sessions.Les systèmes interactifs évoluent peu à peu et tendent vers des interactions plus transparentes où les objets physiques et les entités numériques se rencontrent et s'entremêlent. Ces formes avancées d'interaction sont maintenant connues sous des qualificatifs multiples tels que réalité augmentée, interfaces tangibles, interaction mixte ou encore Systèmes Interactifs Mixtes (SIM). L'émergence de ces paradigmes s'accompagne d'un impact fort sur la conception de ces systèmes interactifs, conduisant notamment les concepteurs à devoir manipuler plus de variables et à devoir explorer un espace de conception plus vaste. Face à cette complexité, de nouveaux formalismes sont apparus pour décrire les fondements de ces systèmes et les représenter. Malgré ces avancées théoriques, les propositions de conception restent principalement limitées à un même ensemble de technologies et de manipulations. De plus, les méthodologies de conception utilisées pour les IHM traditionnelles ne sont pas confrontées à ce verrou lié à l'exploration des possibles. En conséquence, pour contribuer à l'essor des SIM nous proposons une approche de conception appelée " Model Assisted Creativity Session " (MACS), combinant modèle formel de l'interaction mixte et activité de conception collaborative et créative. L'objectif de cette approche est tout d'abord de permettre une exploration plus systématique de l'espace de conception au travers de la manipulation des concepts exprimés par un formalisme du domaine. En outre, il s'agit de mettre à disposition un langage de référence pour une équipe pluridisciplinaire afin de faciliter la collaboration entre des participants ayant différents champs de compétences. L'intérêt est donc d'offrir une représentation partagée du problème et de permettre aux équipes pluridisciplinaires d'explorer l'espace de conception jusque dans ses limites les plus retranchées, les conduisant ainsi à atteindre des espaces innovants et créatifs. Sur la base d'une analyse des principes fondamentaux de la conception collaborative et créative et d'une revue des ressources de conception existantes dans le domaine des SIM, nous identifions un ensemble de principes permettant de décrire les contours d'une telle méthode. Nous introduisons ensuite les principes de mise en œuvre de la méthode MACS. Nous étudions ensuite les limites posées par la compréhension par des novices de deux formalismes de l'interaction mixte. Puis nous décrivons un ensemble de cas d'étude et analysons l'impact de l'utilisation du modèle sur le déroulement d'une séance de conception de SIM au travers d'une analyse de protocole verbal et comportemental. Nous montrons notamment que cette méthode permet d'aider les participants à se focaliser sur le problème de conception, à faire référence au modèle pour exprimer leurs idées et que les concepts exprimés par la notation accompagnent le processus de génération d'idées. Nous concluons la présentation de nos travaux par l'illustration de SIM issus de cette méthode ainsi que par la présentation d'un outil interactif visant à accompagner le déroulement de ces séances de conception collaboratives et créatives

BL.Optim: a configurable optimizer towards decision-making support for various scheduling and routing problem

International audienceNowadays, there is a wide demand from many organizations to regularly route and schedule staff and goods to satisfy specific objectives. Scheduling and routing issues often require consideration of various businesses constraints under different industrial contexts, thereby ensuring the optimal use of resources. Decision-makers need customizable optimizers to specify business-oriented constraints and define their target planning generation needs. In our work, we present "BL.Optim", an optimizer with two-stage model-based architecture, which aims at capturing routing and scheduling requirement for a wide category of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP). We demonstrated our approach on Home Health Care Routing and Scheduling Problems (HHCRSP), Home Meal Delivery Problems and Preventive Maintenance Scheduling and Routing Problems. The captured requirements are customizable by activating the necessary constraints facing the different realistic use cases. A series of CSP-based activable soft constraints and non-violated hard constraints are embedded in BL.Optim. To meet industrial requirements in solving the real-world cases with significant dimension, we opted for the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm for solution generation. Solutions generated by BL.Optim for HHCRSP are competitive against the manual scheduling result, with less 28% less assigned caregivers to perform required 142 services per day by respecting all the specified constraints

Usability Recommendations for Mixed Interactive Systems: extraction and integration in a design process

International audienceMixed interactive systems (MIS) denote an advanced form of interaction that aims at combining physical and digital worlds, such as mixed and augmented reality, tangible user interfaces, ubiquitous computing, etc. Their main interest relates to the use of physical artifacts from the user's activity customary context. These can support partly the user communication with the interactive system: personal belongings and everyday physical objects are very familiar to users for smoothly interacting with the system. Initially limited to very specific domains, MIS now appear in many domains, thus motivating the need for adapted design supports. Beyond the technological issues and challenges, the variety of entities involved and the originality of the conditions of use, innovative interaction forms also trigger the need to focus on the elaboration of a solid, structured and common usability knowledge dedicated to MIS. In this chapter, we first report on a systematic review of the literature on MIS evaluation. From that review, usability recommendations were selected and deciphered before reformulating them under a common format. Finally, three different classification schemes of the usability recommendations obtained are proposed to facilitate search and retrieval, but also to better integrate them into the MIS development process