Seven HCI Grand Challenges

This article aims to investigate the Grand Challenges which arise in the current and emerging landscape of rapid technological evolution towards more intelligent interactive technologies, coupled with increased and widened societal needs, as well as individual and collective expectations that HCI, as a discipline, is called upon to address. A perspective oriented to humane and social values is adopted, formulating the challenges in terms of the impact of emerging intelligent interactive technologies on human life both at the individual and societal levels. Seven Grand Challenges are identified and presented in this article: Human-Technology Symbiosis; Human-Environment Interactions; Ethics, Privacy and Security; Well-being, Health and Eudaimonia; Accessibility and Universal Access; Learning and Creativity; and Social Organization and Democracy. Although not exhaustive, they summarize the views and research priorities of an international interdisciplinary group of experts, reflecting different scientific perspectives, methodological approaches and application domains. Each identified Grand Challenge is analyzed in terms of: concept and problem definition; main research issues involved and state of the art; and associated emerging requirements

UXAml Framework: αξιολόγηση της εμπειρίας χρήσης σε περιβάλλοντα διάχυτης νοημοσύνης

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) constitutes a new human-centred technological paradigm, where technologically advanced environments that feature interconnected and embedded devices, supported by sensors’ network, computer vision, as well as reasoning and adaptation capabilities, are oriented towards anticipating and satisfying the needs of their inhabitants. In this context, and in view of the not distant realization of AmI environments, evaluation becomes of paramount importance.Evaluation constitutes a central concept in Human-Computer Interaction, exhibiting increased interest and confronting novel challenges, as technology evolves from the desktop paradigm and contexts expand beyond the organizational domain to almost any life activity. To this end, several efforts have attempted to “frame” evaluation and define how it should be pursued in terms of usability, user experience, as well as interaction adaptation and ubiquitousness. Nevertheless, as technology advances, the number of parameters to be assessed becomes too large to be studied through user experiment observators’ notes, or evaluation questionnaires to be filled-in by users (a common current practice when evaluating user experience). On the other hand, despite the fact that the notion of Ambient Intelligence exists for more than a decade and the vital importance of evaluation, efforts in the domain have mainly focused in identifying the challenges in the field and advocating the importance of in situ evaluations, while there is a lack of generic and systematic approaches towards user experience evaluation in Ambient Intelligence.This thesis proposes a novel comprehensive conceptual and methodological framework, named UXAmI, for the evaluation of user experience in AmI environments, aiming to assess a wide range of characteristics and qualities of such environments, taking into account traditional and modern models and evaluation approaches. Adopting an iterative approach, the framework suggests metrics to be assessed through expert-based reviews during the early stages of development, and user-based evaluations for the latter development stages of an AmI system or environment. Taking advantage of the infrastructure of AmI environments, UXAmI framework proposes the automatic assessment of several attributes during user-based evaluation. A combination of automated measurements, user observation, questionnaires and interviews is expected to allow evaluators to gain insight into the composite nature of user experience in AmI environments, studying issues related to intuitiveness, unobtrusiveness, adaptivity, usability, cross-platform and multi-user usage, implicit interactions, appeal and emotions, safety and privacy, as well as user acceptance. Finally, a number of tools are proposed in the context of the current thesis, aiming to assist UX engineers in carrying out evaluations in AmI environments based on the UXAmI framework. These include a tool for expert-based reviews against guidelines, a tool for aggregating experimental data and analysing the results of user testing experiments, and a professional networking platform for UX engineers, which will act as an information resource and a means for collaboration, integrating the other two tools as a reward to active and loyal community members.Η Διάχυτη Νοημοσύνη (ΔΝ) αποτελεί ένα νέο ανθρωποκεντρικό τεχνολογικό παράδειγμα, όπου τεχνολογικά προηγμένα περιβάλλοντα που απαρτίζονται από διασυνδεδεμένες και ενσωματωμένες συσκευές, δίκτυα αισθητήρων, υπολογιστική όραση, καθώς και δυνατότητες συλλογιστικής και αυτοπροσαρμογής, προσανατολίζονται στην πρόβλεψη και ικανοποίηση των αναγκών των κατοίκων τους. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο και εν όψει της όχι τόσο μακρινής πραγμάτωσης των περιβαλλόντων ΔΝ, η αξιολόγηση λαμβάνει εξέχουσα σημασία.Η αξιολόγηση αποτελεί κεντρική έννοια στην Αλληλεπίδραση Ανθρώπου – Υπολογιστή, προσελκύοντας αυξανόμενο ενδιαφέρον και αντιμετωπίζοντας νέες προκλήσεις καθώς η τεχνολογία εξελίσσεται πέρα από το υπόδειγμα της επιφάνειας εργασίας (desktop paradigm), ενώ τα πιθανά πλαίσια χρήσης επεκτείνονται εκτός από το εργασιακό περιβάλλον σε οποιαδήποτε σχεδόν δραστηριότητα του ανθρώπου. Προς αυτή την κατεύθυνση, αρκετές προσπάθειες έχουν επιχειρήσει να ορίσουν ένα πλαίσιο για την αξιολόγηση και να καθορίσουν πώς θα πρέπει να επιδιώκεται σε ότι αφορά την ευχρηστία και την εμπειρία χρήσης, καθώς και για αυτοπροσαρμοζόμενα περιβάλλοντα και περιβάλλοντα πανταχού παρούσας υπολογιστικής δύναμης (ubiquitous computing). Ωστόσο, με την πρόοδο της τεχνολογίας, ο αριθμός των παραμέτρων που πρέπει να αξιολογούνται καθίσταται πολύ μεγάλος για να μελετηθεί μέσω σημειώσεων των παρατηρητών μιας συνεδρίας αξιολόγησης, ή μέσω ερωτηματολογίων τα οποία απευθύνονται στους χρήστες (μια συνηθισμένη τρέχουσα πρακτική κατά την αξιολόγηση της εμπειρίας χρήσης). Αφ’ ετέρου, παρά το γεγονός ότι η έννοια της Διάχυτης Νοημοσύνης υπάρχει για περισσότερο από μια δεκαετία και παρά την καίρια σημασία της αξιολόγησης, οι προσπάθειες στο πεδίο έχουν επικεντρωθεί στον προσδιορισμό των προκλήσεων και στην προώθηση της σημασίας των επί τόπου αξιολογήσεων (in situ), ενώ παρατηρείται έλλειψη γενικευμένων και συστηματικών προσπαθειών προς την κατεύθυνση της αξιολόγησης της εμπειρίας χρήσης σε περιβάλλοντα Διάχυτης Νοημοσύνης.Η παρούσα διατριβή προτείνει ένα καινοτόμο, περιεκτικό εννοιολογικό και μεθοδολογικό πλαίσιο, που ονομάζεται UXAmI, για την αξιολόγηση της εμπειρίας χρήσης σε περιβάλλοντα ΔΝ, στοχεύοντας στην αξιολόγηση ενός μεγάλου εύρους χαρακτηριστικών και ιδιοτήτων τέτοιων περιβαλλόντων, λαμβάνοντας υπόψη παραδοσιακά και σύγχρονα μοντέλα και προσεγγίσεις αξιολόγησης. Υιοθετώντας μια επαναληπτική προσέγγιση, το πλαίσιο προτείνει μετρικές που προσδιορίζονται μέσω επιθεωρήσεων από εμπειρογνώμονες (expert-based reviews) κατά τα αρχικά στάδια της ανάπτυξης, και μέσω αξιολογήσεων με χρήστες σε μετέπειτα στάδια της ανάπτυξης ενός συστήματος ή περιβάλλοντος ΔΝ. Επωφελούμενο από την υποδομή των περιβαλλόντων ΔΝ, το προτεινόμενο UXAmI πλαίσιο εισηγείται την αυτόματη ανάκτηση ποικίλων παραμέτρων κατά τη διάρκεια αξιολογήσεων με χρήστες. Ο συνδυασμός των αυτόματων μετρήσεων, της παρατήρησης των χρηστών, των ερωτηματολογίων και των συνεντεύξεων με χρήστες αναμένεται να βοηθήσει τους αξιολογητές να αποκτήσουν επίγνωση των σύνθετων ζητημάτων της εμπειρίας χρήσης σε περιβάλλοντα ΔΝ, μελετώντας παραμέτρους που αφορούν στη διαισθητικότητα, μη παρεμβατικότητα (unobtrusiveness), αυτοπροσαρμογή, ευχρηστία, χρήση σε πολλαπλές πλατφόρμες και από πολλαπλούς χρήστες, συνεπαγόμενες αλληλεπιδράσεις (implicit interactions), ελκυστικότητα και συναισθήματα, ασφάλεια και ιδιωτικότητα, καθώς και αποδοχή από τους χρήστες. Τέλος, στο πλαίσιο της παρούσας διατριβής προτείνονται εργαλεία που στοχεύουν στην υποβοήθηση των μηχανικών εμπειρίας χρήσης (user experience engineers) κατά τη διεξαγωγή αξιολογήσεων σε περιβάλλοντα ΔΝ με τη χρήση του πλαισίου UXAmI. Αυτά περιλαμβάνουν ένα εργαλείο για αξιολογήσεις από εμπειρογνώμονες βάσει οδηγιών (guidelines), ένα εργαλείο για τη συλλογή δεδομένων από αξιολογήσεις με χρήστες και ανάλυση των αποτελεσμάτων τους, καθώς και μια επαγγελματική πλατφόρμα δικτύωσης για μηχανικούς εμπειρίας χρήσης, η οποία θα δρα ως πηγή πληροφόρησης και μέσο συνεργασίας, ενσωματώνοντας τα άλλα δύο εργαλεία ως επιβράβευση των ενεργών και τακτικών μελών της

User - machine interaction with the use of a binary input device

Concerning an Information Society for all citizens, applications and services should be accessible by people with diverse requirements and preferences, including persons with disabilities. Technological solutions provided today in order to support potentials of alternative access for people with disabilities, are often specialized and consequently of limited use, or closely related to specific technological platforms, which make them obsolete in a short period of time. The development of a system, which will enable the use of applications in a Microsoft Windows environment, supported by the use of binary switches, was carried out in this thesis. Thus, problems concerning the inability to use traditional input devices, such as the keyboard or the mouse, with which people with motion impairments on the upper members have to deal with, are eliminated. In order to achieve our goal, we employed hierarchical scanning techniques with dynamic retrieval of applications hierarchical structure. For the intended target group, the use of hierarchical scanning is the most appropriate method of interaction, mainly due to the rapid interaction it ensures, compared to simple mouse emulators or on-screen keyboards. Furthermore, the dynamic retrieval of an applications hierarchical structure ensures the operation of the scanning system for any application in a windows environment. Consequently, applications become immediately accessible with no need for any modification, in order to support scanning techniques. In this work, we performed, as well, a usability evaluation of a users interaction in a windows environment. The usability metrics were the effectiveness, the efficiency and the satisfaction of users. Analysis of the results, indicated that the system proposed could constitute a useful tool to assist the interaction of a motor impaired user with the applications as well as with the overall environment of Windows.Στα πλαίσια μιας κοινωνίας της πληροφορίας για όλους τους πολίτες, είναι σημαντικό οι εφαρμογές και οι υπηρεσίες να είναι προσβάσιμες από πολίτες με διαφορετικές απαιτήσεις και προτιμήσεις, συμπεριλαμβανομένων ατόμων με αναπηρίες. Οι υπάρχουσες τεχνολογικές λύσεις που σήμερα παρέχονται και υποστηρίζουν δυνατότητες εναλλακτικής πρόσβασης σε άτομα με αναπηρίες, είναι συχνά εξειδικευμένες και κατά συνέπεια περιορισμένης χρήσης, είτε στενά συνδεδεμένες με συγκεκριμένες τεχνολογικές πλατφόρμες που τις καθιστούν απαρχαιωμένες σε σύντομο χρονικό διάστημα. Η παρούσα εργασία, αναφέρεται στη σχεδίαση και υλοποίηση ενός συστήματος, το οποίο καθιστά δυνατή τη χρήση εφαρμογών σε περιβάλλον Microsoft Windows, με τη βοήθεια δυαδικών διακοπτών. Έτσι, επιλύονται τα προβλήματα αδυναμίας χρήσης των παραδοσιακών συσκευών εισόδου, όπως το πληκτρολόγιο και το ποντίκι, που αντιμετωπίζουν τα άτομα με κινητικά προβλήματα στα άνω άκρα, λόγω λειτουργικών ή περιστασιακών αδυναμιών. Για την επίτευξη του παραπάνω στόχου χρησιμοποιήθηκαν τεχνικές ιεραρχικής σάρωσης με δυναμική ανάκτηση της ιεραρχικής δομής των εφαρμογών. Για αυτή την ομάδα στόχου, η χρήση της ιεραρχικής σάρωσης αποτελεί τον ιδανικότερο τρόπο αλληλεπίδρασης, κυρίως λόγω της αυξημένης ταχύτητας αλληλεπίδρασης που εξασφαλίζει, συγκριτικά με απλούς προσομοιωτές ποντικιού και πληκτρολόγια οθόνης. Επιπλέον, η δυναμική ανάκτηση της ιεραρχικής δομής άλλωστε, εξασφαλίζει τη λειτουργία του συστήματος σάρωσης για οποιαδήποτε εφαρμογή σε περιβάλλον Microsoft Windows. Ως αποτέλεσμα, οι εφαρμογές γίνονται αυτόματα προσβάσιμες, χωρίς να είναι αναγκαία οποιαδήποτε τροποποίησή τους για την υποστήριξη τεχνικών σάρωσης. Στα πλαίσια της παρούσας εργασίας, πραγματοποιήθηκε επίσης αξιολόγηση ευχρηστίας της αλληλεπίδρασης, με τη συμμετοχή τελικών χρήστών. Ως κριτήρια ευχρηστίας, μετρήθηκαν η αποτελεσματικότητα, η αποδοτικότητα και η ικανοποίηση των χρηστών. Η μελέτη των αποτελεσμάτων έδειξε ότι το συγκεκριμένο σύστημα εναλλακτικής πρόσβασης συνιστά ένα χρήσιμο εργαλείο για την υποστήριξη αλληλεπίδρασης χρηστών με δυσκολίες κίνησης στα άνω άκρα με τις εφαρμογές καθώς και με το συνολικό περιβάλλον χρήσης των Microsoft Window

Rewarding Contributions in a User-Generated Video Online Community

With the aim to create an active, sustainable, and self-maintained user-generated video online community, this paper proposes a reward scheme to enhance users’ intrinsic motivations towards participating in the community and contributing content. The proposed reward scheme features a system of points, the accumulation of which achieves higher membership levels in the community, which in turn “unlock” specific privileges. Status points can be collected through users’ content contribution and rating activity in the community, fostering thus the community’s self-moderation. Following a gamification approach, the scheme provisions for badges which can be collected by users, according to their activity in the community. User rewarding is also accomplished by means of reputation, ensuring that the status, contributions, ratings, and badges of a user are visible to the entire community

A Multimodal Ambient Intelligence Environment for Playful Learning

Abstract: This paper reports the design, development and evaluation of a technological framework for learning applications, named AmI Playfield, aimed at creating challenging learning conditions through play and entertainment. AmI Playfield is an educative Ambient Intelligent (AmI) environment which emphasizes the use of kinesthetic and collaborative technology in a natural playful learning context and embodies performance measurement techniques. In order to test and assess AmI Playfield, the "Apple Hunt" application was developed, which engages (young) learners in arithmetic thinking through kinesthetic and collaborative play, observed by unobtrusive AmI technology behind the scene. "Apple Hunt" has been evaluated according to a combination of methodologies suitable for young testers, whereas Children Committees are introduced as a promising approach to evaluation with children. The obtained results demonstrate the system's high potential to generate thinking and fun, deriving from the learners' full-body kinesthetic play and team work

A Multimodal Ambient Intelligence Environment for Playful Learning

This paper reports the design, development and evaluation of a technological framework for learning applications, named AmI Playfield, aimed at creating challenging learning conditions through play and entertainment. AmI Playfield is an educative Ambient Intelligent (AmI) environment which emphasizes the use of kinesthetic and collaborative technology in a natural playful learning context and embodies performance measurement techniques. In order to test and assess AmI Playfield, the "Apple Hunt" application was developed, which engages (young) learners in arithmetic thinking through kinesthetic and collaborative play, observed by unobtrusive AmI technology behind the scene. "Apple Hunt" has been evaluated according to a combination of methodologies suitable for young testers, whereas Children Committees are introduced as a promising approach to evaluation with children. The obtained results demonstrate the system's high potential to generate thinking and fun, deriving from the learners' full-body kinesthetic play and team work

Emotional Debiasing Explanations for Decisions in HCI

Schütze C, Lammert O, Richter B, Thommes K, Wrede B. Emotional Debiasing Explanations for Decisions in HCI. In: Degen H, Ntoa S, eds. Artificial Intelligence in HCI. 4th International Conference, AI-HCI 2023, Held as Part of the 25th HCI International Conference, HCII 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark, July 23–28, 2023, Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland; 2023: 318-336.Emotions play an important role in human decision-making. However, first approaches to incorporating knowledge of this influence into AI-based decision support systems are only very recent. Accordingly, our target is to develop an interactive intelligent agent that is capable of explaining the recommendations of AI-systems while taking emotional constraints into account. This article addresses the following research questions based on the emotions of happiness and anxiety: (1) How do induced emotions influence risk propensity in HCI? (2) To what extent does the explanation strategy influence the human explanation recipient in a lottery choice? (3) How well can an HCI system estimate the emotional state of the human? Our results showed that (1) our emotion induction strategy was successful. However, the trend took the opposite direction of ATF predictions. (2) Our explanation strategy yielded a change in the risk decision in only 26% of the participants; in some cases, participants even changed their selection in the opposite direction. (3) Emotion recognition from facial expressions did not provide sufficient indications of the emotional state - because of head position and a lack of emotional display - but heart rate showed significant effects of emotion induction in the expected direction. Importantly, in individual cases, the dynamics of facial expressions followed the expected path. We concluded that (1) more differentiated explanation strategies are needed, and that temporal dynamics may play an important role in the explanation process, and (2) that a more interactive setting is required to elicit more emotional cues that can be used to adapt the explanation strategy accordingly

D2.1 - OPTIMAI - User and ethics legal requirements

The purpose of the deliverable D2.1 'User and ethics and legal requirements I' is to gather and analyse the requirements concerning zero defect manufacturing, quality inspection, production re-configuration and other technology needs of the OPTIMAI pilot partners as well as the legal and ethical issues related to the development and implementation of the platform. The analysis of the initial gathered user and ethics and legal requirements kicks off the relevant development and integration activities in the OPTIMAI project. The requirements elicitation and analysis take into account the Description of Action (DoA), the requirements identified from the pilot partners (i.e. manufacturing companies) and the other OPTIMAI partners, based on their knowledge, expertise and more specifically, the needs in the particular domains that the project pursues to address. Additionally, ethics and legal requirements, as well as technological innovation potential requirements are identified and included in this document. The initial identification of requirements is based on questionnaires, online meetings and videos from the pilot sites, while the method used will be re-iterated through each of the project phases. The identified requirements are grouped into functional and non-functional requirements. Functional requirements describe what the system should do and are classified according to the components of the OPTIMAI architecture. Non-functional requirements are grouped into KPIs, ethics, legal and technology innovation potential requirements. In total 127 requirements are identified out of which 81 are prioritised as "Must" (have), 36 as "Should" have and 10 as "Could" have

Quality Assessment of Virtual Human Assistants for Elder Users

Virtual humans (VHs) are gaining increasing attention in various fields, including games and cultural heritage and technological contexts including virtual reality and augmented reality. Recently, since VHs can simulate human-like behavior, VHs have been proposed as virtual assistants (VAs) for all sorts of education and training applications, including applications focused on the improvement of quality of life (QoL) and well-being. In this research work, we consider the quality and efficiency of VHs implemented as part of the MyHealthWatcher project, which focuses on the monitoring of health-related parameters of elder users to improve their QoL and self-management of chronic conditions. To validate our hypothesis that the increased quality of the VH has a positive effect on user satisfaction and user quality of interaction with the system, we developed and integrated into the MyHealthWatcher system two VH variations. The first was developed with mainstream technologies and the second was developed using a professional pipeline. The two variations developed were assessed by representative target users through a between-subject focus group study. The development and validation process of the two variations allowed us to draw valuable conclusions, which are discussed in this paper

Deciphering the Code: Evidence for a Sociometric DNA in Design Thinking Meetings

Despite the increased popularity of virtual teams, in-person teamwork remains the dominant way of working. This paper investigates to what extent social signals can be used to infer the work domain of team meetings. It reveals insights into the complex nature of team dynamics, that are not often quantified in literature, during the design thinking process. This was done by using sociometric badges to measure the social interactions of four teams over a three week development cycle. From these interactions we were able to discriminate different modes in the design thinking process used by the teams, indicating that different design thinking modes have different dynamics. Through supervised learning we could predict the modes of Need Finding, Ideation, and Prototyping with F1 scores of 0.76, 0.71, and 0.60 respectively. These performance scores significantly outperformed random baseline models, corresponding to a doubling of F1 score of predicting the positive class, indicating that the models did indeed succeed in predicting design thinking mode. This indicates that wearable social sensors provide useful information in understanding and identifying design thinking modes. These initial findings will serve as a first step towards the development of automated coaches for design thinking teams