No description available.

Deictic gestures, which often manifest as pointing, are an important part of interpersonal communication over shared artifacts on surfaces, such as a map on a table. However, in computer-supported distributed settings, deictic gestures can be difficult to see and understand. This problem can be solved through visualizing hands and arms above distributed surfaces, but current solutions are computationally and programmatically expensive, rely on a limited understanding of how gestures are executed and used, and remain largely unevaluated with regards to their effectiveness. This dissertation describes a solution to these problems in four parts: 1. Qualitative observational studies, both laboratory-based and in the wild, that lead to a greater understanding of how gestures are made over surfaces and what parts of a gesture are important to represent. In particular, these observations identified the height of a gesture as a characteristic not well-supported in distributed groupware. 2. A description of the design space available for representing gestures and candidate designs for showing the height of a gesture in distributed groupware. 3. Experimental evaluations of embodiments that include the representation of gesture height. 4. A toolkit for facilitating the capture and representation of gestures in distributed groupware. This work is the first to describe how deictic gestures are made over surfaces and how to visualize these gestures in distributed settings. The KinectArms Toolkit is the first toolkit to allow developers to add rich arm and hand representations to groupware without undue cost or development effort. This work is important because it provides researchers, designers, and developers with new tools for understanding and supporting communication in distributed settings.

As online applications such as online newsgroups, internet game-rooms, online chat-rooms, and peer-to-peer (P2P) resources-sharing systems become popular, online community visualization became a hot research topic. Different forms and metaphors of visualizations focused on various aspects of online communities have been proposed. In this thesis, I propose one prototype of online community visualization which is designed to motivate user contributions in various aspects and stimulate users to participate in the online community more actively. The uneven participation is a well known problem in human society; according to the 80-20 rule, 20% of the people make 80% of contributions, for example, 20% of the employees in a company do 80% of the work. This problem exits in all kinds of online communities, e.g. newsgroups, chat-rooms, but it is particularly crucial for P2P online resources-sharing communities. Such communities do not have a central server and rely solely on the peers not just to provide contributions, but also to ensure the infrastructure. Large P2P file-sharing communities like KaZaA and Limewire can provide the redundancy of peers and resources needed to support the infrastructure and availability of resources. However, when an online community is small, for example, the students in a class, a research group, a department, or a school, the problem of lack of users it is hard to reach a critical mass of user participation, leading to poor service and resource availability, which reduces users interest in participating in the system. To attract users and motivate them to make more contributions into an online resources-sharing community, I propose to use motivational visualization of the community and the contributions of its members. The motivational effect of the visualization is grounded on two theories in social psychology which explain how individuals align their behaviour with each other and with their group (community). In this thesis, I discuss three stages in the design of the visualization and the subsequent redesigns following results from evaluation and user feedback.

Computers play an increasingly large part in childrens daily lives, yet most interface design research has focused on adult users. One area of research that has informed adult interface design is the Media Equation, which explains how people respond to media in a fundamentally social manner and how they treat computers as social actors in interactions. To date, it was unknown whether these findings apply to children as well. This thesis investigates the effects of the Media Equation on children in three specific areas: praise, team formation, and politeness. It also examines whether varying the form of the computer affects the Media Equation in any way and whether there are any gender differences in how children respond to the Media Equation. <p> Little evidence was found to support the existence of Media Equation effects on children. Children responded positively regardless of whether any Media Equation elements were incorporated into the interfaces. These results raise doubts on whether there is any added value to including Media Equation principles into the design of childrens interfaces. The results do, however, shed some light on children-computer interaction and lead to a set of guidelines for designers of childrens technology.

Computers play an increasingly large part in childrens daily lives, yet most interface design research has focused on adult users. One area of research that has informed adult interface design is the Media Equation, which explains how people respond to media in a fundamentally social manner and how they treat computers as social actors in interactions. To date, it was unknown whether these findings apply to children as well. This thesis investigates the effects of the Media Equation on children in three specific areas: praise, team formation, and politeness. It also examines whether varying the form of the computer affects the Media Equation in any way and whether there are any gender differences in how children respond to the Media Equation. <p> Little evidence was found to support the existence of Media Equation effects on children. Children responded positively regardless of whether any Media Equation elements were incorporated into the interfaces. These results raise doubts on whether there is any added value to including Media Equation principles into the design of childrens interfaces. The results do, however, shed some light on children-computer interaction and lead to a set of guidelines for designers of childrens technology.

No description available.

As online applications such as online newsgroups, internet game-rooms, online chat-rooms, and peer-to-peer (P2P) resources-sharing systems become popular, online community visualization became a hot research topic. Different forms and metaphors of visualizations focused on various aspects of online communities have been proposed. In this thesis, I propose one prototype of online community visualization which is designed to motivate user contributions in various aspects and stimulate users to participate in the online community more actively. The uneven participation is a well known problem in human society; according to the 80-20 rule, 20% of the people make 80% of contributions, for example, 20% of the employees in a company do 80% of the work. This problem exits in all kinds of online communities, e.g. newsgroups, chat-rooms, but it is particularly crucial for P2P online resources-sharing communities. Such communities do not have a central server and rely solely on the peers not just to provide contributions, but also to ensure the infrastructure. Large P2P file-sharing communities like KaZaA and Limewire can provide the redundancy of peers and resources needed to support the infrastructure and availability of resources. However, when an online community is small, for example, the students in a class, a research group, a department, or a school, the problem of lack of users it is hard to reach a critical mass of user participation, leading to poor service and resource availability, which reduces users interest in participating in the system. To attract users and motivate them to make more contributions into an online resources-sharing community, I propose to use motivational visualization of the community and the contributions of its members. The motivational effect of the visualization is grounded on two theories in social psychology which explain how individuals align their behaviour with each other and with their group (community). In this thesis, I discuss three stages in the design of the visualization and the subsequent redesigns following results from evaluation and user feedback.

We present recommendations for the design of flexible electronic book readers, based on an empirical evaluation of form factors and input techniques in a single page navigation task. Capacitive touch, pressure, and bend sensors are compared on rigid and flexible devices using a prototype electronic book reader. Results from the evaluation of input techniques suggest flexible designs do not perform significantly worse than rigid designs, and bend gestures perform as well as button presses in flexible form factors. Capacitive touch sensors may have decreased performance on flexible devices. We conclude by presenting recommendations for the design of future flexible e-book readers. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-30 11:49:39.205

No description available.

In recent years, technical advances in the field of Augmented Reality (AR), coupled with the acceleration in computer and graphics processing power, have brought robust and affordable AR within the reach of the wider research community. While the technical issues of AR remain heavily researched, there is also a growing amount of work on user interface development and evaluation, heralding the convergence of traditional Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and AR. Magic Lenses are 2D interface components that provide alternative representations of objects seen through them. In this way, they can be used to provide Focus and Context in the interface, especially when visualising layered information. There are very few, if any, formal evaluations to guide the development of lens-based interfaces. This thesis describes the development and evaluation of Magic Lenses as a tool for AR interfaces. The work starts with a comprehensive survey of many Focus and Context techniques, which are classified based on the way they present views to the users { for example, a Magic Lens is a spatially separated multiple view technique. A formal evaluation of 2D Magic Lenses in a GIS scenario found that users strongly preferred the lens-based interaction technique to others, largely because it reduced the effort of interaction. Accuracy was high with the lenses, but a simple "global view" interface allowed significantly faster performance. This positive result motivated further work on Magic Lenses within AR, where the lens metaphor can reinforce the tangible interaction methods that link virtual and real content. To support rapid exploration of interaction alternatives with AR Magic Lenses, I describe the design and architecture of osgART, an AR development toolkit that is available to the research community as open-source software. Object selection and manipulation is a fundamental interaction requirement for all AR interfaces, and I establish an empirical foundation of performance in this task with a variety of AR interaction techniques, including Magic Lenses. Results show that performance with all techniques is successfully modelled by Fitt's Law, and that Magic Lenses outperformed other techniques. Finally, I examine new interaction techniques based on Magic Lenses, particularly a Flexible Sheet Lens, which allows concurrent bimanual specification of multiple parameters within the visualisation.