For as long as computers have been around, people have looked for ways to involve them in music. Research in computer music progresses in many varied areas: algorithmic composition, music representation, music synthesis, and performance analysis to name a few. However, computer music research, especially relating to music composition, does very little toward making the computer useful for artists in practical situations. This lack of consideration for the user has led to the containment of computer music, with a few exceptions, to academia. <br /><br /> In this thesis, I propose a system that enables a computer to aide users composing music in a specific setting: soundtracks. In the process of composing a soundtrack, a composer is faced with solving non-musical problems that are beyond the experience of composers of standalone music. The system I propose utilizes the processing power of computers to address the non-musical problems thus preventing users from having to deal with them. Therefore, users can focus on the creative aspect of composing soundtrack music. <br /><br /> The guiding principal of the system is to help the composer while not assuming any creative power and while leaving the user in full control of the music. This principal is a major step toward helping users solve problems while not introducing new ones. I present some carefully chosen tasks that a computer can perform with guidance from the user that follow this principal. For example, the system performs calculations to help users compose music that matches the visual presentation and allows users to specify music, using the idea of <strong>timed regular expressions</strong>, so that a computer can fill arbitrary amounts of time with music in a controlled manner. <br /><br /> A prototype application, called <strong>EMuse</strong>, was designed and implemented to illustrate the use and benefits of the proposed system. To demonstrate that the system is capable of serving as a tool to create music, two soundtracks were created for two sample animations. It is beyond the scope of the work presented here to evaluate if the system achieves the goal of being a practical tool for composers. However, the innovations herein discussed are analyzed and found to be useful for soundtrack composition and for future user-centered computer-music research.

Politeness is a part of student-tutor interactions and research in affective computing has shown that this social convention may also be applicable when a computer plays the role of tutor. This study sought to build on previous work that examined the effect of the politeness of computer feedback through the application of social and cognitive theories. Employing a mixed-factor design, a sample of 150 college students completed a multiple cue probability learning task (MCPL) on a computer that provided feedback phrased in one of three different tonal styles (joint-goal, student-goal and baldon- record). Feedback tone was a within-subjects factor. Subjects received feedback as either text or as audio. Audio feedback was a between-subjects factor and was delivered in one of four different modes male/female human voice or a male/female synthesized voice. The study found gender differences in tone preference as well as a possible impact of the Tone x Mode interaction on learning. Specifically, men were more likely than women to prefer the student-goal style feedback prompts. It is hoped that this research can provide additional insight to designers of learning applications when they are designing the feedback mechanisms that these systems should employ.

The Web has opened up many possibilities for disabled people to interact with society, but there is unfortunately a lack of parity between the user interface presented to different users. This dissertation presents a proof of concept on designing a spatial layout presentation for blind users using a screen reader. This is done in three steps by first conducting a survey to determine current practices of web developers, then implementing an instant spatial feedback and comparison function that present the spatial layout, and ends with an evaluation of the spatial layout presentation by the way of user testing The survey yielded a set of guidelines for the realistic development of web technologies for disabled persons based on the participants answered. From the implementation a concept for spatial feedback functions that are portable and expandable is presented. The evaluation shows that the created spatial presentation method passes both objectively and subjectively.

Touchscreen technology is gradually becoming more popular and massive in our present society to the point where it is hard to find a person that has never used this interface system. Handheld devices such as mobile phones and tablets are predominantly based on touchscreens as the main way to interact with them. Nevertheless, that is not the case when it comes to personal computers either desktop machines or laptops which are still chiefly based on traditional keyboard and mouse as their main input system. In this study we explore the potential that touchscreen based interface can offer for personal computers carrying through an observational experiment with six participants that were asked to perform a list of tasks using both traditional keyboard-mouse interface and touchscreen interface. The measurements during the observation concerned time and error rate for every task. Each participant was interviewed right after the completion of the observational phase in order to get a qualitative insight on their views and perceptions regarding both interfaces. The data collected was analyzed based on some existing models within touchscreen interface and human-computer interaction that have been elaborated in previews research. The final results led to the conclusion, that touchscreen-based interface proved to be slower and have higher error rate than traditional interface in a big number of the tasks performed by the participants. Similarly, the general perception of the people towards having touchscreen on a personal computer still seems a bit doubtful, although they do see some concrete positive aspects about this interface. Nevertheless, touchscreen outperformed traditional interface in some particular tasks. This implies that touchscreen interface has a clear potential for personal computers that would let users utilize these machines in a much broader and more interactive way than people do it today with the traditional keyboard-mouse interface.

For as long as computers have been around, people have looked for ways to involve them in music. Research in computer music progresses in many varied areas: algorithmic composition, music representation, music synthesis, and performance analysis to name a few. However, computer music research, especially relating to music composition, does very little toward making the computer useful for artists in practical situations. This lack of consideration for the user has led to the containment of computer music, with a few exceptions, to academia. <br /><br /> In this thesis, I propose a system that enables a computer to aide users composing music in a specific setting: soundtracks. In the process of composing a soundtrack, a composer is faced with solving non-musical problems that are beyond the experience of composers of standalone music. The system I propose utilizes the processing power of computers to address the non-musical problems thus preventing users from having to deal with them. Therefore, users can focus on the creative aspect of composing soundtrack music. <br /><br /> The guiding principal of the system is to help the composer while not assuming any creative power and while leaving the user in full control of the music. This principal is a major step toward helping users solve problems while not introducing new ones. I present some carefully chosen tasks that a computer can perform with guidance from the user that follow this principal. For example, the system performs calculations to help users compose music that matches the visual presentation and allows users to specify music, using the idea of <strong>timed regular expressions</strong>, so that a computer can fill arbitrary amounts of time with music in a controlled manner. <br /><br /> A prototype application, called <strong>EMuse</strong>, was designed and implemented to illustrate the use and benefits of the proposed system. To demonstrate that the system is capable of serving as a tool to create music, two soundtracks were created for two sample animations. It is beyond the scope of the work presented here to evaluate if the system achieves the goal of being a practical tool for composers. However, the innovations herein discussed are analyzed and found to be useful for soundtrack composition and for future user-centered computer-music research.

End users must regularly agree to lengthy software agreements prior to installing software or using software services. However, despite the fact that these agreements contain terms of direct concern to users—e.g., data collection policies—software agreements are typically read by less than 2% of the population [30]. This thesis presents techniques and heuristics for improving the presentation and visual design of software agreements, to better capture reader attention and improve comprehension. In contrast to other techniques, these techniques are applied to the full agreement content, rather than a summary, as summaries have been found to distract readers from the full content of the agreement [44,56]. This thesis introduces two techniques for improving software agreements: narrative pictograms and textured agreements. Narrative pictograms are a pictorial technique designed to improve the communication of agreement terms to non-native readers of the language of an agreement. An experimental study shows that they can successfully communicate the basic concepts of a data collection policy without words. Textured agreements are visually redesigned software agreements that highlight information relevant to users. A pair of experimental studies shows that they increase both reading time—by 30 seconds, from 7 in the first experiment and 20 in the second—and comprehension of agreement content—by 4/16 points, from 0. Finally, a solid understanding of users’ attitudes towards specific agreement content is needed to inform the design of improved software agreements. To that end, this thesis presents an analysis of EULAscan, an online community of anonymous reviewers of software agreements. An open coding is used to categorize 191 EULAscan reviews. From this analysis, functionality emerges as the most prevalent concern. The wide variety of other concerns across reviews suggests that static designs of software agreements would inadequately serve a large population of users. Instead, this thesis proposes a focus on end-user tools that identify and highlight clauses of possible interest to a given user—for example, terms that the user has not seen before.

Loosely coupled workgroups are common in the real world, and workers in these groups are autonomous and weakly interdependent. They have patterns of work and collaboration that distinguish them from other types of groups, and groupware systems that are designed to support loose coupling must address these differences. However, they have not been studied in detail in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and the design process for these groups is currently underspecified. This forces designers to start from scratch each time they develop a system for loosely coupled groups, and they must approach new work settings with little information about how work practices are organized. <br><br> In this dissertation, I present a design framework to improve the groupware design process for loosely coupled workgroups. The framework has three main parts that add a new layer of support to each of the three stages in the general groupware design process: data collection about the target work setting, analysis of the data, and system design based on the analysis results. The framework was developed to provide designers with support during each of these stages so that they can consider important characteristics of loosely coupled work practice while carrying out design for the target group. The design framework is based on information from CSCW and organizational research, and on real-world design experiences with one type of loosely coupled workgrouphome care treatment teams. <br><br> The framework was evaluated using observations, interviews, and field trials that were carried out with multidisciplinary home care treatment teams in Saskatoon Health Region. A series of field observations and interviews were carried out with team members from each of the home care disciplines. The framework was then used to develop Mohoc, a groupware system that supports work in home care. Two field trials were carried out where the system was used by teams to support their daily activities. Results were analyzed to determine how well each part of the design framework performed in the design process. The results suggest that the framework was able to fill its role in specializing the general CSCW design process for loosely coupled groups by adding consideration for work and collaboration patterns that are seen in loosely coupled settings. However, further research is needed to determine whether these findings generalize to other loosely coupled workgroups.

One of the most important problems in real-time, mobile augmented reality is *registration error* -- the misalignment between the computer generated graphics and the physical world the application is trying to augment. Such misalignment may either cause the information presented by the application to be misleading to the user or make the augmentation meaningless. In this work, we question the implied assumption that registration error must be eliminated for AR to be useful. Instead, we take the position that registration error will never be eliminated and that application developers can build useful AR applications if they have an estimate of registration error. We present a novel approach to AR application design: *Spatially Adaptive Augmented Reality* (i.e., applications that change their displays based on the quality of the alignment between the physical and virtual world). The computations used to change the display are based on real-time estimates of the registration error. The application developer uses these estimates to build applications that function under a variety of conditions independent of specific tracking technologies. In addition to introducing Spatially Adaptive AR, this research establishes a theoretical model for AR. These theoretical contributions are manifested in a toolkit that supports the design of Spatially Adaptive AR applications: OSGAR. This work describes OSGAR in detail and presents examples that demonstrate how to use this novel approach to create adaptable augmentations as well as how to support user interaction in the presence of uncertainty.

No description available.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in tradition is narrow defined the communication of information between human and machines. Because the limited of the HCI's speed and the natural level, it needs to use the medium form such as symbol instructions and buttons to express the intent of human. In recent year, the trend of HCI development will be focused on human, with directly computing, determining, and displaying technologies progress, and constantly innovation. Somatosensory equipment not only breaks through the limit of HCI but also the mode of interaction of traditional equipment. Somatosensory equipment can retrieve images through the infrared projector or visible camera, capture the human motion and action, and increase its interaction for natural and intuition. But unfortunately, most of systems are limited to a unique application for special areas, and only detected specific sequences of actions. Once changing the interaction of applications then users have to rewrite the action sequences recognition program to satisfy the somatosensory demands. System cannot be defined human action sequences flexible according the applications request of users, the production process is complex and the scope of application is narrow. This thesis presents an Authoring Tool of Vision-based Somatosensory Action (ATVISA) to improve the drawback. Users can define the human action sequences by the graphical interface, customize the visual detection quickly and recognize correspond to the Somatosensory Action. Till the Somatosensory equipment detects the defined action sequences, triggering the correspond event and dealing with the event request. This thesis employs ATVISA applied to the action sequences and three rehabilitation projects, that with the flexibility and diversification. Users also can compile human action sequences with professional expertise to application to area of education, game, rehabilitation, and so on.