Since conventional audio-video teleconferencing systems have reached their limits, the needs of integrating new sensations to improve users' telecommunication experience are growing. Haptics, the sense of touch, which includes handshake, comforting hug, encouraging pat, and other physical contacts, is of great importance for interpersonal communication, since it allows people to express and receive intimate affection, intention or emotion efficiently. Motivated by a few haptic telecommunication softwares, this thesis presents an innovative webcam-based touchscreen to replace the haptic device, which is used in HugMe system as human hand, to further increase people's degree of immersion with the audio-video-haptic teleconferencing system at a more reasonable price. With our webcam-based touchscreen, the user could directly use his/her bare hand to touch the image of the person who he/she is chatting with, instead of controlling a haptic device as the medium to realize indirect touch. This thesis also gives details of the touchscreen method and our proposed mathematical models for touch position calculation. Experimental results show that our system is accurate and robust, while maintaining high compatibility with conventional audio-video teleconferencing systems for combination. With our haptic jacket, the passive user can feel the touch of the active user at the right position. Also, additional applications with the touchscreen, such as writing and drawing, are developed and tested. Finally, we draw the conclusions and talk about future work.

Since conventional audio-video teleconferencing systems have reached their limits, the needs of integrating new sensations to improve users' telecommunication experience are growing. Haptics, the sense of touch, which includes handshake, comforting hug, encouraging pat, and other physical contacts, is of great importance for interpersonal communication, since it allows people to express and receive intimate affection, intention or emotion efficiently. Motivated by a few haptic telecommunication softwares, this thesis presents an innovative webcam-based touchscreen to replace the haptic device, which is used in HugMe system as human hand, to further increase people's degree of immersion with the audio-video-haptic teleconferencing system at a more reasonable price. With our webcam-based touchscreen, the user could directly use his/her bare hand to touch the image of the person who he/she is chatting with, instead of controlling a haptic device as the medium to realize indirect touch. This thesis also gives details of the touchscreen method and our proposed mathematical models for touch position calculation. Experimental results show that our system is accurate and robust, while maintaining high compatibility with conventional audio-video teleconferencing systems for combination. With our haptic jacket, the passive user can feel the touch of the active user at the right position. Also, additional applications with the touchscreen, such as writing and drawing, are developed and tested. Finally, we draw the conclusions and talk about future work.

Konstanz, Univ., Bachelorarb., 2008.

Since conventional audio-video teleconferencing systems have reached their limits, the needs of integrating new sensations to improve users' telecommunication experience are growing. Haptics, the sense of touch, which includes handshake, comforting hug, encouraging pat, and other physical contacts, is of great importance for interpersonal communication, since it allows people to express and receive intimate affection, intention or emotion efficiently. Motivated by a few haptic telecommunication softwares, this thesis presents an innovative webcam-based touchscreen to replace the haptic device, which is used in HugMe system as human hand, to further increase people's degree of immersion with the audio-video-haptic teleconferencing system at a more reasonable price. With our webcam-based touchscreen, the user could directly use his/her bare hand to touch the image of the person who he/she is chatting with, instead of controlling a haptic device as the medium to realize indirect touch. This thesis also gives details of the touchscreen method and our proposed mathematical models for touch position calculation. Experimental results show that our system is accurate and robust, while maintaining high compatibility with conventional audio-video teleconferencing systems for combination. With our haptic jacket, the passive user can feel the touch of the active user at the right position. Also, additional applications with the touchscreen, such as writing and drawing, are developed and tested. Finally, we draw the conclusions and talk about future work.

Touchscreen technology is on the rise as the new standard in smartphone design. But, the usability of touchscreen is hindered for consumers that lack the physical ability to navigate such devices. Two focus groups were conducted in order to identify specific uses and gratifications that people with visual impairments had when using mobile phones. Additional questions were presented to the participants to determine if touchscreen technology limited access to communication and entertainment. The responses revealed an upward trend in touchscreen smartphone adoption among the participants. These users chose to adopt touchscreen smartphones that had built-in and downloadable assistive features which contributed to user-friendly designs.

The first children’s video game called Mixed up Mother Goose was created by Roberta Williams in 1987. This game was created for a desktop. Today, many children’s games exist on a range of digital platforms. While these platforms offer different types of interactions for engagement and learning, many of these interactions are limited to tapping, dragging and clicking. Current studies have shown that physical interaction is important for young children’s development. Traditionally, nursery rhymes have been this source of physical interaction to engage children in the process of learning. This study looks at the physical engagement of children with nursery rhymes in oral, print and digital mediums. Engagement in oral medium consists of learning nursery rhymes through the movement of the body such as action rhymes and finger plays. Engagement in print medium consists of learning nursery rhymes through interactive books that include movable books, puppet books and sound books. Digital medium, including platforms such as touchscreen devices and laptops, continue to evolve from tap and click games to increased physical engagement of children. Although digital medium is a new phenomenon, it is following a similar evolution as print and oral mediums. Digital medium is increasingly engaging children with interactive play. As part of a larger project, this research collects information and provides a matrix that identifies the attributes of physical engagement employed by these three mediums.

Zugl.: Braunschweig, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2009

Zugl.: München, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a software application for guided practice on a tablet computer used as a multisensory instructional tool in the process of teaching music staff notation to students who have dyslexia. Between 15 to 20% of people in the United States may have dyslexia or related learning differences in the form of difficulties with reading and language processing. Having dyslexia does not preclude engagement in playing music; however, evidence shows students with dyslexia often have trouble learning how to read music notation (Ganschow, Lloyd-Jones & Miles, 1994; Miles & Westcombe, 2004; Stewart, 2008). Technology, specifically the tablet computer, has potential to address individual needs of students in the domain of music; a variety of applications have been created for teaching and practicing the recognition of musical notation. The theoretical framework underlying the study was based on two theories related to the learning process of students with dyslexia: the phonological deficit and the dyslexia automatization deficit theories. A quasi-experimental design was employed using intact classes of third, fourth, and fifth grade students (N=72) who attended an academy for students with dyslexia. The students were taught a series of lessons on reading music staff notation for seven weeks. The same teacher taught all classes. The treatment classes were given time for the guided-practice of music staff notation on the tablet; the control classes used the tablets for the same amount of time with other music applications, but were not given access to the specific treatment program. Data used to tabulate results of the study were collected with the use of pre and posttests of music staff notation recognition. The overall conclusion was that the use of the tablet for guided-practice in conjunction with instruction was significantly more effective at increasing the ability of students to recognize musical staff notation than using instruction alone.

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.