To promote both quality and economy in the production of applications and their interactive interfaces, it is desirable to delay their mutual binding. The later the binding, the more separable the interface from its application. An ideally separated interface can factor tasks from a range of applications, can provide a level of independence from hardware I/O devices, and can be responsive to end-user requirements. Current interface systems base their separation on two different abstractions. In linguistic architectures, for example User Interface Management Systems in the Seeheim model, the dialogue or syntax of interaction is abstracted in a separate notation. In agent architectures like Toolkits, interactive devices, at various levels of complexity, are abstracted into a class or call hierarchy. This Thesis identifies an essential feature of the popular notion of direct manipulation: directness requires that the same object be used both for output and input. In practice this compromises the separation of both dialogue and devices. In addition, dialogue cannot usefully be abstracted from its application functionality, while device abstraction reduces the designer's expressive control by binding presentation style to application semantics. This Thesis proposes an alternative separation, based on the abstraction of the medium of interaction, together with a dedicated user agent which allows direct manipulation of the medium. This interactive medium is called the surface. The Thesis proposes two new models for the surface, the first of which has been implemented as Presenter, the second of which is an ideal design permitting document quality interfaces. The major contribution of the Thesis is a precise specification of an architecture (UMA), whereby a separated surface can preserve directness without binding in application semantics, and at the same time an application can express its semantics on the surface without needing to manage all the details of interaction. Thus UMA partitions interaction into Surface Interaction, and deep interaction. Surface Interaction factors a large portion of the task of maintaining a highly manipulable interface, and brings the roles of user and application designer closer.

As one of the main topics in Virtual Reality (VR), travel interfaces have been studied by many researchers in the past decades. However, it is still a challenging topic today. One of the design problems is the tradeoff between speed and precision. Some tasks (e.g., driving) require a user to travel long distances with less concern about precise movement, while other tasks (e.g., walking) require users to approach nearby objects in a more precise way, and to care less about the speed. Between these two extremes there are scenarios when both speed and precision become equally important. In the real world, we often seamlessly balance these requirements. However, most VR systems only support a single travel mode, which may be good for one range of travel, but not others. We propose and evaluate a new VR travel framework which supports three separate multi-touch travel techniques for different distance ranges, that all use the same input device with a unifying metaphor of the user’s fingers becoming their legs. We investigate the usability and user acceptance for the fingers-as-legs metaphor, as well as the efficiency, naturalness, and impact on spatial awareness such an interface has.

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2012

This thesis describes a new method of calculating data priority by using adaptive mobile user and device profiles which change with user location, time of the day, available networks and data access history. The profiles are used for data prefetching, selection of most suitable wireless network and cache management on the mobile device in order to optimally utilize the device�s storage capacity and available bandwidth. Some of the inherent characteristics of mobile devices due to user movements are �non-persistent connection, limited bandwidth and storage capacity, changes in mobile device�s geographical location and connection (eg. connection can be from GPRS to WLAN to Bluetooth). New research is being carried out in making mobile devices work more efficiently by reducing and/or eliminating their limitations. The focus of this research is to propose, evaluate and test a new user profiling technique which specifically caters to the needs of the mobile device users who are required to access large amounts of data, possibly more than the device storage capability during the course of the day or week. This work involves the development of an intelligent user profiling system along with mobile device caching system which will first allocate weight (priority) to the different sets and subsets of the total given data based on user�s location, user�s appointment information, user�s preferences, device capabilities and available networks. Then the profile will automatically change the data weights with user movements, history of cached data access and characteristics of available networks. The Adaptive User and Device Profiles were designed to handle broad range of the issues associated with: �Changing network types and conditions �Limited storage capacity and document type support of mobile devices �Changes in user data needs due to their movements at different times of the day Many research areas have been addressed through this research but the primary focus has remained on the following four core areas. The four core areas are : selecting the most suitable wireless network; allocating weights to different datasets & subsets by integrating user�s movements; previously accessed data; time of the day with user appointment information and device capabilities.

This research explores multiple geo-visualisations to enhance the comprehension of changing reality. It establishes a cognitive visualisation model as a framework and a multiple visualisation approach for implementation. Multiple visualisations of land cover changes including 2D and 3D, abstract and realistic simulations with static and dynamic components are created and tested through a formal user survey. It is concluded that although the real world cannot be perfectly represented, comprehension and interpretation can be improved and enhanced by providing effective multiple visualisations in accordance with users’ specific needs and tasks.

<p>In Alzheimer association’s clinique practice, there was a need to communicate with people with mild dementia. Videophone is considered as one of the best assistive communication tool for these people since video communication is not only a tool to break an isolation caused by the disease, but also a powerful way to help people demonstrate their ideas and understand what is said in a conversation with pictures, signs and body language. Therefore, an easy-to-use videophone for people with mild dementia is needed.</p><p>The goal of this master thesis is to design a graphical user interface (GUI) of an easy-to-use videophone for people with mild dementia according to their characteristics and difficulties of using everyday technology. User centered design (UCD) was used in the design. To get familiar with the user, literature research was conducted before design.</p><p>Low-fidelity prototype was created. With the help of Karolinska institute’ research group on people with dementia, the prototype was refined twice. Based on the refined low-fidelity prototype, an interactive prototype with navigation, sound and animation effect was created. A usability testing was conducted on older adults with this interactive prototype.</p><p>In addition to the GUI of functions for people with mild dementia, GUI of functions for other care givers was also created and presented in this master thesis.</p>

In Alzheimer association’s clinique practice, there was a need to communicate with people with mild dementia. Videophone is considered as one of the best assistive communication tool for these people since video communication is not only a tool to break an isolation caused by the disease, but also a powerful way to help people demonstrate their ideas and understand what is said in a conversation with pictures, signs and body language. Therefore, an easy-to-use videophone for people with mild dementia is needed. The goal of this master thesis is to design a graphical user interface (GUI) of an easy-to-use videophone for people with mild dementia according to their characteristics and difficulties of using everyday technology. User centered design (UCD) was used in the design. To get familiar with the user, literature research was conducted before design. Low-fidelity prototype was created. With the help of Karolinska institute’ research group on people with dementia, the prototype was refined twice. Based on the refined low-fidelity prototype, an interactive prototype with navigation, sound and animation effect was created. A usability testing was conducted on older adults with this interactive prototype. In addition to the GUI of functions for people with mild dementia, GUI of functions for other care givers was also created and presented in this master thesis.

Lacome is a multi-user cross-platform system that supports collaboration in a shared large screen display environment. Lacome allows users to share their desktops or application windows using any standard VNC server. It supports multi-user concurrent interaction on the public shared display as well as input redirection so users can control each other's applications. La-come supports separate types of interaction through a Lacome client for window management tasks on the shared display(move, resize, iconify, de-iconify) and for application interactions through the VNC servers. The system architecture provides for Publishers that share information and Navigators that access information. A Lacome client can have either or both, and can initiate additional Publishers on other VNC servers that may not be Lacome clients. Explicit access control policies on both the server side the client side provide a flexible framework for sharing. The architecture builds on standard cross-platform components such as VNC and JRE. Interaction techniques used in the window manager ensure simple and transparent multi-user interactions for managing the shared display space. We illustrate the design and implementation of Lacome and provide insights from initial user experience with the system.

Work on developing team models for use in adaptive systems generally and intelligent tutoring systems more specifically has largely focused on the task skills or learning efficacy of teams working on short-term projects in highly-controlled virtual environments. In this work, we report on the development of a balanced team model that takes into account task skills, teamwork behaviours and team workflow that has been empirically evaluated via an uncontrolled real-world long-term pilot study of student software engineering teams. We also discuss the use of the the J4.8 machine learning algorithm with our team model in the construction of a team performance prediction system.

Work on developing team models for use in adaptive systems generally and intelligent tutoring systems more specifically has largely focused on the task skills or learning efficacy of teams working on short-term projects in highly-controlled virtual environments. In this work, we report on the development of a balanced team model that takes into account task skills, teamwork behaviours and team workflow that has been empirically evaluated via an uncontrolled real-world long-term pilot study of student software engineering teams. We also discuss the use of the the J4.8 machine learning algorithm with our team model in the construction of a team performance prediction system.