Esta dissertação tem por objetivo pesquisar como o design da experiência pode influenciar e contribuir no desenvolvimento de interfaces de produtos, tendo o seu objetivo de aplicação, o desenvolvimento de uma interface de produto para cegos. Para tanto, inicialmente abordam-se aspectos relacionados a interação de cegos com os produtos e com o ambiente externo, contextualização, suas características e necessidades. Também se apresentam os fatores relacionados ao design da experiência, design de interfaces e métodos para o desenvolvimento de produtos com foco no usuário, contexto de uso e usabilidade. Buscam-se os fatores e diretrizes relacionadas a interação e percepção de usuários referente a produtos, assim como, de que forma o projeto da experiência ocorre no desenvolvimento do projeto de design de produto. Após a fundamentação teórica realiza-se a aplicação de um roteiro de desenvolvimento de interface de produto elaborado com base na metodologia de design thinking e diretrizes relacionadas a partir da pesquisa teórica. O roteiro desenvolvido é aplicado no desenvolvimento de uma interface de produto destinada a usuários cegos, sendo realizado por profissionais de design. Ao final desta pesquisa são apresentados os resultados do produto desenvolvido, bem como, o relatório de observação, a partir do acompanhamento da aplicação do roteiro, servindo de referência para projetos futuros. / This thesis aims to investigate how the experience design can influence and contribute to the development of product interfaces, and their goal of application, developing a user interface for blind product. For this purpose, initially addressing himself interacting aspects of the blind with the products and with the external environment, context, their characteristics and needs. It also presents the factors related to experience design, interface design, and methods for developing products with focus on the user, context of use and usability. Seek the factors and guidelines related to interaction and perception of users regarding products, as well as how the experience design occurs in the project development of product design. After the theoretical foundation is realized applying a development roadmap for the product interface developed based on the methodology of design thinking and related guidelines from the theoretical research. The script developed is applied to develop an interface of produce to blind users, being performed by design professionals. At the end of this research are presented the results of the developed product, as well as the observation report from the monitoring of the implementation of the roadmap, providing a reference for future projects.

Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) är en ögonsjukdom som leder till blindhet, sjukdomsförloppet varierar från individ till individ och det finns för närvarande ingen botande behandling. Att utveckla en synskada successivt och bli tvungen att anpassa sig efter en ny vardag skapar osäkerhet och ett stort lidande. Hjälpmedel som underlättar vardagen mottages motvilligt och den synskadade förnekar vanligtvis sin situation. Som sjuksköterska är det viktigt att ha förståelse för den synskadades situation och lidande för att kunna skapa en god vårdrelation. Problemet är att det finns lite forskning inom området, vilket leder till upprepade missförstånd och ett vårdlidande för patienten. Syftet med studien är att beskriva hur det är att leva med vetskapen om att ha en sjukdom som leder till blindhet och hur den förändrande vardagen upplevs och hanteras. Vi har valt att analysera biografier för att få patientens beskrivning av sin subjektiva upplevelse och den metod som Dahlborg Lyckhage beskriver har stått till grund för analysen. I analysen framkom fyra huvudteman med underteman som ligger till grund för resultatet. De fyra huvudtemana är: svårigheter med att acceptera sin sjukdom, de första stegen till hantering, att bli sedd som blind och att bli vän med sin sjukdom. Vi har funnit liknande resultat i andras studier och resultatet upplevs som relevant för den vård som sjuksköterskan praktiserar. Det är viktigt att synliggöra och uppmärksamma dessa personers livsvärld då RP är en vanlig ögonsjukdom och det är omöjligt att veta när en synskadad patient kommer in genom dörren till avdelningen. / <p>Program: Sjuksköterskeutbildning</p><p>Uppsatsnivå: C</p>

Conclusions. The retractable non-invasive needle seems to have reasonably good capability of blinding patients and is more successful in acupuncture-naive subjects than in experienced ones. The failure to produce similar sensation of stimulation in the sham acupuncture group may be the major reason for incomplete blinding. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) / Design, participants and outcomes. We conducted a randomized controlled trial of 398 acupuncture-naive subjects and 197 acupuncture-experienced subjects who were recruited from the outpatients clinic of a university hospital in China. Acupuncture-naive and experienced subjects were randomized separately to receive the real acupuncture treatment or the placebo acupuncture at acupoint Hegu on the left hand. After the intervention, the percentage of patients who thought they had received real acupuncture was compared between the real and sham acupuncture groups. We defined the degree of blinding as 100% minus the difference in the percentage between the two groups. The score of pain, soreness, numbness, heaviness and distension during the treatment was also compared between the two groups. / Introduction. The newly designed retractable needle which can be used to produce non-invasive placebo or (sham) acupuncture seems promising and has been used in clinical trials. Several studies investigated the credibility of the retractable needle in blinding patients. These studies are generally small and mostly in acupuncture-naive patients and mainly focused on the difference in acupuncture-related sensations rather than the successfulness of blinding. / Objectives. To quantify the degree of blinding of the retractable non-invasive placebo needle in blinding both acupuncture-naive and experienced subjects in clinical trials and to explore possible reasons for incomplete blinding of the sham needle. / Results. In acupuncture-naive subjects, the percentage of those who thought they had received real acupuncture was 70.4% and 42.7% respectively in the real and sham acupuncture groups. The degree of blinding was 72.3% (95% CI: 62.9%, 81.7%). In acupuncture-experienced subjects, the degree of blinding was 58.9 (95% CI: 46.2%, 71.6%). The difference in degree of blinding between acupuncture-naive and experienced subjects was statistically significant (P&lt;0.05). The score of pain, soreness, numbness, heaviness and distension in the real acupuncture group was all statistically significantly higher than that in the sham acupuncture group in both acupuncture-naive and experienced subjects (P&lt;0.001). / Zhang Hongwei. / "February 2005." / Adviser: Jin Ling Tang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-01, Section: B, page: 0161. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-102). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Sistemas de Gerenciamento de Identidade Centrados no Usuário têm sido utilizados na Internet como meio de evitar o gerenciamento de múltiplas contas em sites e serviços na Web. Embora o uso de tais sistemas apresente benefícios, usuários podem ter sua privacidade prejudicada, uma vez que suas identidades tendem a ser conhecidas e controladas por uma entidade central. Dessa maneira, os acessos a serviços e o comportamento dos usuários tendem a ser facilmente rastreáveis em toda a rede. Por outro lado, do ponto de vista dos serviços, existem casos onde o conhecimento e a comprovação de informações do usuário é uma necessidade para o controle de acesso e provimento do serviço. Assim, o objetivo deste trabalho é propor uma solução de gerenciamento de identidades que proteja a privacidade e, ao mesmo tempo, possibilite a comprovação de atributos de identidade do usuário para um provedor de serviços no ambiente Web atual. Esta proposta inova dentre os trabalhos relacionados encontrados na literatura devido à sua adequação às necessidades e limitações existentes no ambiente típico da interação entre usuários e sites na Internet. A verificação do cumprimento dos objetivos de autenticação de atributos de identidade e privacidade do usuário é realizada por meio da análise formal do protocolo da solução. Ainda, com a aplicação de uma métrica, são analisados as condições e níveis de anonimato de um usuário no uso do sistema. / User-centric Identity Management Systems have been used on the Internet for avoiding the management of multiple users accounts in different sites and services on the Web. Although those systems can bring some benefits for its users, their privacy may be jeopardized since their identities are likely to be known and controlled by a central entity. This way, users behavior and their accesses to services are likely to be easily tracked on the network. On the other side, from the services point of view, there are occasions where the knowledge and verification of some users aspects and attributes are necessary for access control and service providing. Thereby, the goal of this work is to propose a solution for identity management that provides enhanced privacy for user and, at the same time, allows them to prove attributes of their identity to a service provider on the current Web environment on the Internet. This proposal innovates when compared to related works due to its suitability to the environment and its interactions between clients and sites on the Internet. The objectives related to the verification of identitys attributes and privacy concerns in this proposal are analyzed by formal methods. This work also presents an analysis on the conditions and levels of anonymity when users interact with the system based on a metric.

Nesta tese analisamos e propomos métodos para a equalização não-treinada (cega) de canais de comunicação lineares FIR baseados em filtros de partículas, que são técnicas recursivas para a solução Bayesiana de problemas de filtragem estocástica. Iniciamos propondo novos métodos para equalização sob ruído gaussiano que prescindem do uso de codificação diferencial, ao contrário dos métodos existentes. Empregando técnicas de evolução artificial de parâmetros, estendemos estes resultados para o caso de ruído aditivo com distribuição não-gaussiana. Em seguida, desenvolvemos novos métodos baseados nos mesmos princípios para equalizar e decodificar conjuntamente sistemas de comunicação que empregam códigos convolucionais ou em bloco. Através de simulações numéricas, observamos que os algoritmos propostos apresentam desempenhos, medidos em termos de taxa média de erro de bit e velocidade de convergência, marcadamente superiores aos de métodos tradicionais, freqüentemente aproximando o desempenho dos algoritmos ótimos (MAP) treinados. Além disso, observamos que os métodos baseados em filtros de partículas determinísticos exibem desempenhos consistentemente superiores aos dos demais métodos, sendo portanto a melhor escolha caso o modelo de sinal empregado permita a marginalização analítica dos parâmetros desconhecidos do canal. / In this thesis, we propose and analyze blind equalization methods suitable for linear FIR communications channels, focusing on the development of algorithms based on particle filters - recursive methods for approximating Bayesian solutions to stochastic filtering problems. Initially, we propose new equalization methods for signal models with gaussian additive noise that dispense with the need for differentially encoding the transmitted signals, as opposed to the previously existing methods. Next, we extend these algorithms to deal with non-gaussian additive noise by deploying artificial parameter evolution techniques. We next develop new joint blind equalization and decoding algorithms, suitable for convolutionally or block-coded communications systems. Via numerical simulations we show that the proposed algorithms outperform traditional approaches both in terms of mean bit error rate and convergence speed, and closely approach the performance of the optimal (MAP) trained equalizer. Furthermore, we observed that the methods based on deterministic particle filters consistently outperform those based on stochastic approaches, making them preferable when the adopted signal model allows for the analytic marginalization of the unknown channel parameters.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T17:05:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vagner Uendel de Sa Medeiros.pdf: 1681184 bytes, checksum: 6838cfdf4c1b1e02f7c96d2ae71dd60c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-02 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / One of the problems faced by the visually impaired is the location of objects in an unfamiliar environment. Find a product in a store without assistance is almost impossible for a person with low vision. Therefore, in this research we developed a system to provide the location of products in the supermarket aisles and then allow reading the bar code or NFC tag on the product or on the shelf .To select from the options location or identification, the screen cell was divided into two parts such that the blind or visually impaired persons may choose between them. Hence, in this study used a smartphone with Android operating system. The system was developed using the MIT App Inventor 2. This interface is a web application with open source developed by Google and maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The interface is divided into two parts, one devoted to the design and implementation for another logic. The program is based on the Scheme language, Google voice ID and bar code reader. The device was tested indoors simulating aisles and shelves of a supermarket measuring the time required to find and identify five products. The adoption by store and supermarket system developed for this research, facilitating the location and identification of products, should contribute to the independence and quality of life for people with visual limitations / Um dos problemas enfrentados pelos deficientes visuais é a localização de objetos em um ambiente desconhecido. Encontrar um produto numa loja, sem assistência é quase impossível para uma pessoa com baixa visão. Portanto,nessa pesquisa foi desenvolvido um sistema para proporcionar a localização de produtos nos corredores dos supermercados e a seguir permitir a leitura do código de barras ou da etiqueta NFC no produto ou na prateleira. Para selecionar entre as opções localização ou identificação, a tela do celular foi dividida em duas partes de tal modo que os deficientes visuais ou pessoas com baixa visão possam escolher entre elas . Para tanto, neste trabalho foi usado um smartphone com sistema operacional Android. O sistema foi desenvolvido utilizando o MIT App Inventor 2. Esta interface é uma aplicação web com código-fonte aberto desenvolvido pelo Google e mantido pelo Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts (MIT). A interface é dividida em duas partes, uma para à concepção da aplicação dedicada e outra para a lógica. A programação é baseada na linguagem Scheme, identificador de voz Google e leitor de código de barras. O dispositivo foi testado em ambiente fechado simulando corredores e prateleiras de um supermercado mensurando o tempo necessário para encontrar e identificar cinco produtos.A adoção por loja e supermercados do sistema desenvolvido para essa pesquisa, facilitando a localização e identificação de produtos, devera contribuir para a independência e qualidade de vida das pessoas com limitações visuais

Quantum computers promise to offer a considerable speed-up in solving certain problems, compared to the best classical algorithms. In many instances, the gap between quantum and classical running times is conjectured to be exponential. While this is great news for those applications where quantum computers would provide such an advantage, it also raises a significant challenge: how can classical computers verify the correctness of quantum computations? In attempting to answer this question, a number of protocols have been developed in which a classical client (referred to as verifier) can interact with one or more quantum servers (referred to as provers) in order to certify the correctness of a quantum computation performed by the server(s). These protocols are of one of two types: either there are multiple non-communicating provers, sharing entanglement, and the verifier is completely classical; or, there is a single prover and the classical verifier has a device for preparing or measuring quantum states. The latter type of protocols are, arguably, more relevant to near term quantum computers, since having multiple quantum computers that share a large amount of entanglement is, from a technological standpoint, extremely challenging. Before the realisation of practical single-prover protocols, a number of challenges need to be addressed: how robust are these protocols to noise on the verifier's device? Can the protocols be made fault-tolerant without significantly increasing the requirements of the verifier? How do we know that the verifier's device is operating correctly? Could this device be eliminated completely, thus having a protocol with a fully classical verifier and a single quantum prover? Our work attempts to provide answers to these questions. First, we consider a single-prover verification protocol developed by Fitzsimons and Kashefi and show that this protocol is indeed robust with respect to deviations on the quantum state prepared by the verifier. We show that this is true even if those deviations are the result of a correlation with the prover's system. We then use this result to give a verification protocol which is device- independent. The protocol consists of a verifier with a measurement device and a single prover. Device-independence means that the verifier need not trust the measurement device (nor the prover) which can be assumed to be fully malicious (though not communicating with the prover). A key element in realising this protocol is a robust technique of Reichardt, Unger and Vazirani for testing, using non-local correlations, that two untrusted devices share a large number of entangled states. This technique is referred to as rigidity of non-local correlations. Our second result is to prove a rigidity result for a type of quantum correlations known as steering correlations. To do this, we first show that steering correlations can be used in order to certify maximally entangled states, in a setting in which each test is independent of the previous one. We also show that the fidelity with which we characterise the state, in this specific test, is optimal. We then improve the previous result by removing the independence assumption. This then leads to our desired rigidity result. We make use of it, in a similar fashion to the device-independent case, in order to give a verification protocol that is one-sided device-independent. The importance of this application is to show how different trust assumptions affect the efficiency of the protocol. Next, we describe a protocol for fault-tolerantly verifying quantum computations, with minimal "quantum requirements" for the verifier. Specifically, the verifier only requires a device for measuring single-qubit states. Both this device, and the prover's operations are assumed to be prone to errors. We show that under standard assumptions about the error model, it is possible to achieve verification of quantum computation using fault-tolerant principles. As a proof of principle, and to better illustrate the inner workings of the protocol, we describe a toy implementation of the protocol in a quantum simulator, and present the results we obtained, when running it for a small computation. Finally, we explore the possibility of having a verification protocol, with a classical verifier and a single prover, such that the prover is blind with respect to the verifier's computation. We give evidence that this is not possible. In fact, our result is only concerned with blind quantum computation with a classical client, and uses complexity theoretic results to argue why it is improbable for such a protocol to exist. We then use these complexity theoretic techniques to show that a client, with the ability to prepare and send quantum states to a quantum server, would not be able to delegate arbitrary NP problems to that server. In other words, even a client with quantum capabilities cannot exploit those capabilities to delegate the computation of NP problems, while keeping the input, to that computation, private. This is again true, provided certain complexity theoretic conjectures are true.

abstract: With 285-million blind and visually impaired worldwide, and 25.5 million in the United States, federally funded universities should be at the forefront when designing accessible websites for the blind community. Fifty percent of the university homepages discussed in my thesis failed accessibility checker tests because alternative text was not provided in the alt-attribute for numerous images, making them inaccessible to blind users. The images which failed included logos, photographs of people, and images with text. Understanding image content and context in relation to the webpage is important for writing alternative text that is useful, yet writers interpret and define the content and context of images differently or not at all. Not all universities follow legal guidelines of using alternative text for online images nor implements best practices of analyzing images prior to describing them within the context of the webpage. When an image used in a webpage is designed only to be seen by sighted users and not to be seen by screen reader software, then that image is not comparably accessible to a blind user, as Section 508 mandates. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Technical Communication 2018

O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar aspectos da aptidão física de 24 adolescentes cegos (12 de escolas regulares e 12 de uma escola especial) e sua percepção sobre as aulas de educação física. Também foram analisadas as atitudes de noventa professores de educação física com relação à inclusão de alunos com deficiências nas escolas regulares. Quanto à atitude dos professores, verificou-se que as maiores preocupações foram sobre sua falta de preparo e a escassez de estrutura da escola para receber, de forma adequada, alunos com deficiências. No que se refere aos testes de aptidão física, os alunos da escola especial apresentaram resultados superiores e uma melhor evolução em praticamente todas as variáveis pesquisadas. Quanto à aceitação e à competência percebidas, novamente os alunos da escola especial demonstraram resultados mais positivos do que seus colegas de escolas inclusivas, afirmando serem mais participativos nas aulas e sentindo-se mais bem aceitos pelos colegas e pelo professor. Por fim, com relação ao conceito dos adolescentes cegos sobre educação física, observou-se que aqueles da escola especial apresentaram um conceito mais relacionado à saúde, à convivência com os amigos e ao ganho de independência. Já os das escolas inclusivas destacaram com mais força o conceito de educação física vinculado ao esporte e, em alguns casos, não conseguiram perceber sua importância enquanto disciplina escolar. Os dados mostraram que ainda são necessários ajustes para que a inclusão nas aulas de educação física seja de fato vantajosa para os alunos com deficiências / The aim of this study was to assess fitness aspects of 24 blind adolescents (12 from inclusive schools and 12 from a special school) and their perceptions about physical education classes. It was also analyzed the attitudes of ninety physical education teachers toward the inclusion of handicapped students in regular schools. About teachers? attitudes, it was verified that major concerns were insufficient knowledge of teachers and poor facilities in schools to adequately receive handicapped students. With regard to fitness tests, students from special schools presented better results and evolution in almost all assessed variables. About perceived acceptance and competence, students from special school again showed more positive results than their colleagues from inclusive schools, asserting to be more participative in classes and more accepted by their classmates and their teachers. At last, with regard to blind adolescents? concept about physical education, it was verified that those from special school had a concept more related with health, friendship and autonomy gain. By the other hand, the adolescents from inclusive schools detached strongly physical education concept entailed to sport and, in some cases, they didn\'t get to perceive its importance as a school discipline. Results showed that still some agreements are necessary for inclusion in physical education classes to be advantageous for handicapped students

Cette thèse a été préparée à l'IMT atlantique dans le contexte du projet FITNESS. Ce projet Européen vise à moderniser les radios PMR (Professional Mobile Radio), utilisées par les services de sûretés. L'objectif est de développer un nouveau récepteur compatible avec les 4 normes européennes, tout en ajoutant de nouvelles fonctionnalités. Les contributions de cette thèse à FITNESS concernent la rétrocompatibilité du nouveau récepteur avec les standards actuels. Un filtre de sélection de canal de fréquence centrale reconfigurable a été utilisé pour gérer cette interopérabilité. Toutefois on notera que sa bande passante est trop large et que plusieurs canaux de communications insuffisamment atténués serons présents au niveau des convertisseurs. Pour relâcher les contraintes de linéarité et les marges de numérisation, nous proposons de rendre le récepteur conscient de son environnement spectral.L'intérêt de cette méthode a été développé dans une première partie de la thèse. Une méthode de détection aveugle basée sur les propriétés cyclostationnaires du signal de communication a été proposée. Nous utilisons ensuite cet outil pour détecter la présence d'harmoniques indésirables créés lors d'un fonctionnement en régime non linéaire du récepteur. Nous montrons qu'il est ainsi possible de détecter très tôt le mode de fonctionnement du récepteur. Enfin, basé sur les deux études précédentes nous proposons une méthode permettant d'adapter automatiquement les paramètres de la chaine analogique. Cette preuve de concept basé sur une boucle de rétroaction permet une amélioration significative du taux d'erreur binaire tout en relâchant les contraintes au niveau analogique. / This thesis was prepared at IMT Atlantique, in the context of the FITNESS project. This European project aims to modernize PMR (Professional Mobile Radio) radios, used by security services. The objective is to develop a new receiver compatible with the 4 European standards, while adding new features. The contributions of this thesis to FITNESS concern the backwards compatibility of the new receiver with current standards. A reconfigurable central frequency channel selection filter was used to manage this interoperability. However, it should be noted that its bandwidth is too large and that several insufficiently attenuated communication channels are present at the A/D converters input. To relax linearity constraints and digitization margins, we propose to make the receiver aware of its spectral environment.The interest of this method has been developed in a first part of this document. A method for blind detection based on the cyclostationary properties of the communication signal has been proposed. We then use this tool to detect the presence of unwanted harmonics created during non-linear operation of the receiver. We show that it is possible to detect the operating mode of the receiver before the useful signal degradation. Finally, based on the two previous studies, we propose a method to automatically adapt the parameters of the analog receiver. This proof of concept based on a feedback loop allows a significant improvement in the bit error rate while relaxing constraints at the analog level.