The Semantic Web and Linked Data movements with the aim of creating, publishing and interconnecting machine readable information have gained traction in the last years. However, the majority of information still is contained in and exchanged using unstructured documents, such as Web pages, text documents, images and videos. This can also not be expected to change, since text, images and videos are the natural way in which humans interact with information. Semantic structuring of content on the other hand provides a wide range of advantages compared to unstructured information. Semantically-enriched documents facilitate information search and retrieval, presentation, integration, reusability, interoperability and personalization. Looking at the life-cycle of semantic content on the Web of Data, we see quite some progress on the backend side in storing structured content or for linking data and schemata. Nevertheless, the currently least developed aspect of the semantic content life-cycle is from our point of view the user-friendly manual and semi-automatic creation of rich semantic content. In this thesis, we propose a semantics-based user interface model, which aims to reduce the complexity of underlying technologies for semantic enrichment of content by Web users. By surveying existing tools and approaches for semantic content authoring, we extracted a set of guidelines for designing efficient and effective semantic authoring user interfaces. We applied these guidelines to devise a semantics-based user interface model called WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) which enables integrated authoring, visualization and exploration of unstructured and (semi-)structured content. To assess the applicability of our proposed WYSIWYM model, we incorporated the model into four real-world use cases comprising two general and two domain-specific applications. These use cases address four aspects of the WYSIWYM implementation: 1) Its integration into existing user interfaces, 2) Utilizing it for lightweight text analytics to incentivize users, 3) Dealing with crowdsourcing of semi-structured e-learning content, 4) Incorporating it for authoring of semantic medical prescriptions.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems are attracting attention because their channel capacity can exceed single-input single-output systems, with no increase in bandwidth. While MIMO systems offer substantial capacity improvements, it can be challenging to characterize and verify their channel models. This paper describes a software MIMO channel simulator with a graphical user interface that allows the user to easily investigate a number of MIMO channel characteristics for a channel recently proposed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 29-November 02, 1990 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Modem microcomputers are proving to be viable hosts for telemetry functions, including data simulators. A specialized high-performance hardware architecture for generating and processing simulator data can be implemented on an add-in card for the microcomputer. Support software implemented on the host provides a simple, high-quality human interface with a high degree of user programmability. Based on this strategy, the Physical Science Laboratory at New Mexico State University (PSL) is developing a Programmable PCM Data Simulator for microcomputer hosts. Specifications and hardware/software architectures for PSL’s Programmable PCM Data Simulator are discussed, as well as its interactive user interface.

Pagrindinis darbo tikslas - realizuoti programinę įrangą, gebančią automatiškai testuoti vartotojo sąsają ir testinius atvejus generuojančią iš duotų UML modelių. Kuriama programinė įranga turėtų būti realizuota naudojant Java technologiją. Taigi šio darbo tyrimo sritis apims vartotojo sąsajos testavimo automatizavimo būdų analizę. UML modeliai tapo ypač populiaria priemone modeliuojant programinės įrangos architektūrą. UML modeliai šiais laikais naudojami ne tik įprastoms klasių diagramoms, veiklos diagramoms, sekų diagramoms modeliuoti ir pan., bet tampa vis populiaresnia priemone ir yra taikomi daugelio kitų projektavimo uždavinių sprendimui. Vartotojo sąsajos atvaizdavimas UML diagramomis vis dar nėra populiarus būdas, nors literatūroje vis dažniau sutinkame siūlymų naudoti šias technologijas. Taigi literatūroje atsirandantys straipsniai, vykdomos konferencijos ir panašaus pobūdžio įvykiai byloja, kad ateityje ši technologija neaplenks ir vartojo sąsajos modeliavimo proceso. Rinkoje jaučiamas vartotojo sąsajos automatinio testavimo sistemos, kuri gebėtų testinius atvejus generuoti iš UML modelių ir automatiškai vykdyti testavimą, trūkumas. Tokia sistema galėtų būti naudojama efektyvesniam testavimui atlikti. Tokia sistema gebėtų testuoti vartotojo sąsają greičiau ir tiksliau. Greitis pasiekiamas tuo, kad automatinio testavimo procese nedalyvauja žmogus, o visą testavimą atlieka įrenginio procesorius. Testuojant sistemą skirtingose platformose testavimą galima atlikti... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / In many cases, testing is an essential, but time and resource consuming activity in the software development process. In the case of model-based development, test construction and test execution can be partially automated. As the application size is constantly growing, the need for automated testing frameworks comes into place, particularly frameworks for automated testing of user interaction and graphical user interface. This document describes an implementation of the GUI test generator framework based on UML models where specific UML activity diagrams are used for test case generation. It is not a usual case to use UML activity diagrams for UI modeling. However the existing stereotypes of activity diagram elements are not suitable for UI modeling. With usual activity diagram it is complicated to define buttons, containers, pages and other UI elements in the diagram and find differences between them. Even more complicated is to model the navigation of the testing application. Using this approach the UI can be defined in a set of UI elements along with a set of UI navigation elements. This is an optimal and suitable approach in most cases. This document describes an implementation of the automated GUI tests runner framework as well. This framework is able to run the given application in test mode using the previously generated test cases. The framework collects all the information about each test case results and provides it to the tester. Future improvements: Find the... [to full text]

For both the CAVETM and the adaptable technology possessed by the University of New Orleans, crystal eye glasses are used to produce a stereoscopic view, and an ascension flock of birds tracking system is employed for tracking of the user's head position and position of a wand in 3D space. It is argued that with these immersive technologies along the use of gestures and hand movements should provide a more natural interface with the immersive virtual environment. This allows a more rapid and efficient set of actions to recognize geometry, interaction with a spatial environment, the ability to find errors, or navigate through an environment. The wand interface is used to provide an improved means of interaction. This study quantitatively measures the differences in interaction when compared with traditional human computer interfaces. This work uses competitive usability in four different Benchmarks: 1) navigation, 2) error detection/correction, 3) spatial awareness, and 4) a “shopping list” of error identifications. This work expands on [Butler & Satter's, 2005] work by conducting tests in the CAVETM system, rather than principally employing workbench technology. During testing, the testers are given some time to “play around” with the CAVETM environment for familiarity before undertaking a specific exercise. The testers are then instructed regarding tasks to be completed, and are asked to work quickly without sacrificing accuracy. The research team timed each task, counted errors, and recorded activity on evaluation sheets for each Benchmark test. At the completion of the testing scenarios involving Benchmarks 1, 2, 3, or 4, the subjects were given a survey document and asked to respond by checking boxes to communicate their subjective opinions.

Excel offers great flexibility and allows non-programmers to create complex functionality – but at the same time, it can become very nested with cells pointing to other cells, especially if there have been many changes over a more extended period. This has happened to ICS – a small company who has its focus on calibration, out of an array of different things relating to material testing. The system they have for field calibrations today have been overly complicated and hard to maintain and consists of multiple Excel spreadsheets. The conclusion has been that a new system needs to be developed – but question how, remains. By creating a prototype using modern web-technologies, this study has evaluated if a web application can meet the specific functional requirements ICS have and if it is a suitable solution for a new system. The prototype was put under manual user test, and the results find that the prototype meets all the requirements, meaning that a webapplication could work as a replacement. During the user tests, this study has also evaluated the differences in learnability and efficiency of users, between the static user interface of the current Excel-based system and the dynamic user interface of the web-based prototype. The users have performed a calibration with both systems, and parameters such as time to completion or number of errors made have been recorded. By comparing the test results from both systems, this study has concluded that a dynamic user interface is more likely to improve learnability for novice users, but have a low impact on efficiency for expert users.

Through immersive stereoscopic displays and natural user interfaces, virtual reality (VR) is capable of offering the user a sense of presence in the virtual space, and has been long expected to revolutionize how people interact with virtual content in various application scenarios. However, with many technical challenges solved over the last three decades to bring low cost and high fidelity to VR experiences, we still do not see VR technology used frequently in many seemingly suitable applications. Part of this is due to the lack of expressiveness and efficiency of traditional “simple and reality-based� 3D user interfaces (3DUIs). The challenge is especially obvious when complex interaction tasks with diverse requirements are involved, such as editing virtual objects from multiple scales, angles, perspectives, reference frames, and dimensions. A common approach to overcome such problems is through hybrid user interface (HUI) systems that combine complementary interface elements to leverage their strengths. Based on this method, the first contribution of this dissertation is the proposal of Force Extension, an interaction technique that seamlessly integrates position-controlled touch and rate-controlled force input for efficient multi-touch interaction in virtual environments. Using carefully designed mapping functions, it is capable of offering fluid transitions between the two contexts, as well as simulating shear force input realistically for multi-touch gestures. The second contribution extends the HUI concept into immersive VR by introducing a Hybrid Virtual Environment (HVE) level editing system that combines a tablet and a Head-Mounted Display (HMD). The HVE system improves user performance and experience in complex high-level world editing tasks by using a “World-In-Miniature� and 2D GUI rendered on a multi-touch tablet device to compensate for the interaction limitations of a traditional HMD- and wand-based VR system. The concept of Interaction Context (IC) is introduced to explain the relationship between tablet interaction and the immersive interaction, and four coordination mechanisms are proposed to keep the perceptual, functional, and cognitive flow continuous during IC transitions. To offer intuitive and realistic interaction experiences, most immersive 3DUIs are centered on the user’s virtual avatar, and obey the same physics rules of the real world. However, this design paradigm also employs unnecessary limitations that hinders the performance of certain tasks, such as selecting objects in cluttered space, manipulating objects in six degrees of freedom, and inspecting remote spaces. The third contribution of this dissertation proposes the Object Impersonation technique, which breaks the common assumption that one can only immerse in the VE from a single avatar, and allows the user to impersonate objects in the VE and interact from their perspectives and reference frames. This hybrid solution of avatar- and object-based interaction blurs the line between travel and object selection, creating a unique cross-task interaction experience in the immersive environment. Many traditional 3DUIs in immersive VR use simple and intuitive interaction paradigms derived from real world metaphors. But they can be just as limiting and ineffective as in the real world. Using the coordinated HUI or HVE systems presented in this dissertation, one can benefit from the complementary advantages of multiple heterogeneous interfaces (Force Extension), VE representations (HVE Level Editor), and interaction techniques (Object Impersonation). This advances traditional 3D interaction into the more powerful hybrid space, and allows future VR systems to be applied in more application scenarios to provide not only presence, but also improved productivity in people’s everyday tasks.

The goal of this thesis is to demonstrate how user testing can be used to identify and remediate learnability issues of a web application. Experimentation revolved around ASSISTments (www.assistments.org), an intelligent tutoring web application in which teachers create virtual classrooms where they can assign problem sets to their students and gain valuable data which can be used to make informed decisions. Recent log analysis uncovered very low task completion rates for new users on tasks that were intended to be trivial. Suspecting that this could be due to poor user interface design, user tests were conducted to help identify usability problems. Sessions were analyzed, and changes were made between each user test to address issues found. Feedback from user testing led to the implementation of an embedded support system. This support system consisted of a splash page which gave an overview of how the system should be used and a collection of context-sensitive tooltips which tried to give the user instructions on what to do as well as explain various parts of the interface. A randomized control trial was performed to measure the effectiveness of the embedded support. 69 participants were shown one of two interfaces: one with embedded support and one without. Task completion rates were analyzed for each of the groups. We found that the support system was able to influence which links a user clicked. However, although the support system was intended to address poor task completion rates, users in the conditions had similar task completion rates regardless of whether the support system was enabled.

We are studying the use of tilt-enabled handheld touchscreen devices as an interface for top-down strategy games. We will explore how using different input modes (tilt and touch) compare for certain tasks in terms of efficiency and comfort. Real-time and turn-based strategy games are a popular form of electronic gaming, though these games currently have only minor representation on tablets. This genre of game requires both a wide variety of input and the display of a wealth of information. We are exploring whether, with suitable interface developments, this genre can become as accessible on tablet devices as on traditional computers. These interface approaches may also prove useful for expanding the presence of other game genres in the mobile space.

Airborne imaging platforms have been applied to such diverse areas as surveillance, natural disaster monitoring, cartography and environmental research. However, airborne imaging data can be expensive, out of date, or difficult to interpret. This work introduces an Orthorectified Airborne Imaging (OAI) system designed to provide near real time images in Google Earth. The OAI system consists of a six camera airborne image collection system and a ground based image processing system. Images and position data are transmitted from the air to the ground station using a point to point (PTP) data link antenna connection. Upon reaching the ground station, image processing software combines the six individual images into a larger stitched image. Stitched images are processed to remove distortions and then rotated so that north is pointed up (orthorectified). Because the OAI images are very large, they must be broken down into a series of progressively higher resolution tiles called an image pyramid before being loaded into Google Earth. A KML programming technique called a super overlay is used to load the image pyramid into Google Earth. A program and Graphical User Interface created in C# create the KML super overlay files according to user specifications. Image resolution and the location of the area being imaged relitive to the aircraft are functions of altitude and the position of the imaging cameras. Placement of OAI images in Google Earth allows the user to take advantage of the place markers, street names, and navigation features native to the Google Earth environment.