The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry is currently challenged by low productivity trends and labor shortages. Efforts in academia and industry alike invested in developing solutions to this pressing issue. The majority of such efforts moved towards modernization of the industry, making use of digitalization approaches such as cyber-physical systems (CPS). In this direction, various research works have developed methods to capture information from construction environments and elements and provide monitoring capabilities to measure construction productivity at multiple levels. At the root of construction productivity, the productivity at the worker level is deemed critical. As a result, previous works explored monitoring the productivity of construction workers and resources to address the industry's productivity problems. However, productivity trends are not promising and show a need to more rigorously address productivity issues. Labor shortages also exacerbated the need for increasing the productivity of the current labor workers. Active means to address productivity have been explored as a solution in recent years. As a result, previous research took advantage of CPS and developed systems that sense construction workers' actions and environment and enable interaction with workers to render productivity improvements. One viable solution to this problem is providing on-demand activity-related information to the workers while at work, to decrease the need for manually seeking information from different sources, including supervisors, thereby improving their productivity. Especially, construction workers whose activities involve visual and manual limitations need to receive more attention, as seeking information can jeopardize their safety. Multiple labor trades such as plumbing, steel work, or carpenters are considered within this worker classification. These workers rely on knowledge gathered from the construction project documentation and databases, but have difficulties accessing this information while doing their work. Research works have explored the use of knowledge retrieval systems to give access to construction project data sources to construction workers through multiple methods, including information booths, mobile devices, and augmented reality (AR). However, these solutions do not address the need of this category of workers in receiving on-demand activity related information during their work, without negatively impacting their safety. This research focuses on voice, as an effective modality most appropriate for construction workers whose activities impose visual and manual limit actions. to this end, first, a voice-based solution is developed that supports workers' productivity through providing access to project knowledge available in Building Information Modeling (BIM) data sources. The effect of the selected modality on these workers' productivity is then evaluated using multiple user studies. The work presented in this dissertation is structured as follows: First, in chapter 2, a literature review was conducted to identify means to support construction workers and how integration with BIM has been done in previous research. This chapter identified challenges in incorporating human factors in previous systems and opportunities for seamless integration of workers into BIM practices. In chapter 3, voice-based assistance was explored as the most appropriate means to provide knowledge to workers while performing their activities. As such, Chapter 3 presents the first prototype of a voice-based intelligent virtual agent, aka VIVA, and focuses on evaluating the human factors and testing performance of voice as a modality for worker support. VIVA was tested using a user study involving a simulated construction scenario and the results of the performance achieved through VIVA were compared with the baseline currently used in construction projects for receiving activity-related information, i.e., blueprints. Results from this assessment evidenced productivity performance improvements of users using VIVA over the baseline. Finally, chapter 4 presents an updated version of VIVA that provides automatic real-time link to BIM project data and provides knowledge to the workers through voice. This system was developed based on web platforms, allowing easier development and deployment and access to more devices for future deployment. This study contributes to the productivity improvements in the AEC industry by empowering construction workers through providing on-demand access to project information. This is done through voice as a method that does not jeopardize workers' safety or interrupt their activities. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by developing an in-depth study of the effect of voice-based support systems on worker productivity, enabling real-time BIM-worker integration, and developing a working worker-level productivity support solution for construction workers whose activities limit them in manually accessing project knowledge. / Doctor of Philosophy / The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry is currently challenged by low productivity trends and labor shortages. At the root of productivity, the improving productivity of construction workers is of critical essence. Therefore, academia and industry alike have shown great interest in research to develop solutions addressing construction worker productivity. For this purpose, monitoring systems for construction worker support have been developed, but productivity trends do not seem to improve, while labor shortages have increased productivity concerns. Other approaches to address productivity improvements have explored active means for productivity support. These include monitoring systems that also interact with the user. Construction workers performing activities that require allocating immense attention while using both hands, e.g. plumbers, steel workers, carpenters, have not been the focus of previous research because of the challenges of their conditions and needs. The activities performed by these workers require access to construction project data and documentation. Still, it is difficult for these workers to access information from the documents while doing their work. Therefore, previous researchers have explored methodologies to bring project data and documentation to the field but providing workers on-demand access to this data and documents have not been thoroughly studied. This research focuses on identifying the most appropriate method to provide workers access to information during activities that require more visual and manual attention. Worker support is provided by developing a solution that provides workers access to knowledge during their activities without being disruptive. The study then evaluated the effect of providing non-disruptive access to information sources enabled through the developed solution on the productivity for workers. First, in chapter 2, this study reviews the literature on approaches to connect construction project databases, a.k.a. Building Information Modeling (BIM), and workers. This review identified system types, integration approaches, and future research trends for linking BIM sources and with workers. In addition, this chapter's outcomes highlight system interoperability challenges and challenges in developing interactive systems involving humans. In chapter 3, a voice-based support system was developed as the most appropriate method for worker support during work activities that limit visual and manual worker capabilities. Then, the performance benefits of using a voice-based support system for construction workers was evaluated through a user study involving simulated construction activities. Finally, in chapter 4, this study provided a new integration method to connect BIM and workers in real-time. This system allows workers to interact with information from BIM through voice. The system was developed based on web platforms, allowing easier development and deployment and access to more devices for future deployment. This study contributes to the productivity improvements in the AEC industry by empowering construction workers through providing on-demand access to project information. This is done through voice as a method that does not jeopardize workers' attention or interrupt their activities.

When intelligent voice-based assistants (VBAs) present news, they simultaneously act as interlocutors and intermediaries, enabling direct and mediated communication. Hence, this study discusses and investigates empirically how interlocutor and intermediary predictors affect an assessment that is relevant for both: trustworthiness. We conducted a secondary analysis using data from two online surveys in which participants (N = 1288) had seven quasi-interactions with either Alexa or Google Assistant and calculated hierarchical regression analyses. Results show that (1) interlocutor and intermediary predictors influence people’s trustworthiness assessments when VBAs act as news presenters, and (2) that different trustworthiness dimensions are affected differently: The intermediary predictors (information credibility; company reputation) were more important for the cognition-based trustworthiness dimensions integrity and competence. In contrast, intermediary and interlocutor predictors (ontological classification; source attribution) were almost equally important for the affect-based trustworthiness dimension benevolence.

O sistema de TV digital interativa está em fase de implantação no Brasil. O middleware Ginga, responsável por permitir a apresentação de programas interativos, prevê que usuários possam interagir com aplicações apresentadas na TV ao pressionar de teclas em um controle remoto. Considerando que controles remotos tradicionais apresentam limitações de usabilidade, este trabalho teve o objetivo investigar a aplicação de conceitos de computação ubíqua, em particular interfaces naturais e multimodais, como alternativas para prover interatividade entre usuários e programas de TV digital. Como resultado, um dispositivo móvel alternativo ao controle remoto tradicional foi utilizado no projeto de novos mecanismos de interação que incluem interfaces baseadas em telas sensíveis ao toque, interfaces sensíveis a gestos capturados por dispositivos que contêm acelerômetros, e interfaces que contêm microfones que permitem entrada de dados por voz. A construção de protótipos correspondentes foi beneficiada pela (assim como beneficiou) implementação prévia de um componente que oferece funcionalidades para envio de dados multimodais para um receptor de TV digital contendo o middleware Ginga, e de um componente que, instalado no receptor, permite a comunicação peer-to-peer entre dispositivos sem fio / The tradicional Brazilian TV system is being replaced by an interactive digital platform. The Ginga middleware, responsible for allowing the presentation of interactive programs, is able to support user interactions with TV applications by means of key presses on a remote control. Since traditional remotes have usability limitations, this work aimed at investigating the application of ubiquitous computing concepts, such as natural and multimodal interfaces, to provide alternatives for the interaction among users and TV applications. Considering the availability of mobile devices such as smartphones, prototype interfaces based on touch screens, as well as gesture-based, accelerometer-based, and voice-based interfaces have been designed and implemented to allow the interaction usually provided by remote controls. The implementation of those interfaces was supported by the previous development of components providing multimodal interaction and peer-to-peer communication in the context of the Brazilian interactive digital TV system middleware

Abstract  The present work is a quantitative and qualitative analysis of pragmatic strategies for delivering critique, and types of politeness, used by undergraduate L2 students of English at different stages of peer-review discussion. The material examined consists of four corpora of authentic conversations between students, the main purpose of which was to give feedback on each other’s contributions during an English A-level course, at Mid-Sweden University. The conversations explored were carried out electronically, and represent four different online environments, or modes of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The material from the two asynchronous modes of CMC is comprised of L2 students’ written discussion board messages and spoken posts recorded using online software. The two synchronous environments under investigation are text-based and voice-based chat. Taking Brown and Levinson’s (1987) framework of politeness as a point of departure, the present study uses a combination of corpus and conversation analytical methods. The basic unit of analysis has been defined as the shortest message of peer-review critique that constitutes a thematic unit: these have been examined in terms of their content and politeness features associated with them, and analyzed in terms of the pragmatic strategy and type of politeness adopted. The types of pragmatic strategies or message organization patterns at different stages, i.e. initial versus subsequent feedback, of the peer-review discussion have also been analyzed. The results of the study show that the pragmatic strategies aimed at praise and agreement prevail in the corpus data produced by predominantly native speakers of Swedish. Even though the pragmatic strategies used for disagreement and negative evaluation are rich in propositional content, their occurrences and distribution vary across the four modes of CMC examined. These results seem to have wider implications in the context of online L2 learning activities, providing insights about the language of peer-review critique in a Swedish academic setting.   Keywords: computer-mediated communication (CMC), Conversation Analysis (CA), conversation management, discussion boards, feedback category, mode of CMC, peer-review discussion, politeness theory, pragmatic strategy, speech act of critique, text-based chat, type of politeness, voice-based chat, VoiceThread

O sistema de TV digital interativa está em fase de implantação no Brasil. O middleware Ginga, responsável por permitir a apresentação de programas interativos, prevê que usuários possam interagir com aplicações apresentadas na TV ao pressionar de teclas em um controle remoto. Considerando que controles remotos tradicionais apresentam limitações de usabilidade, este trabalho teve o objetivo investigar a aplicação de conceitos de computação ubíqua, em particular interfaces naturais e multimodais, como alternativas para prover interatividade entre usuários e programas de TV digital. Como resultado, um dispositivo móvel alternativo ao controle remoto tradicional foi utilizado no projeto de novos mecanismos de interação que incluem interfaces baseadas em telas sensíveis ao toque, interfaces sensíveis a gestos capturados por dispositivos que contêm acelerômetros, e interfaces que contêm microfones que permitem entrada de dados por voz. A construção de protótipos correspondentes foi beneficiada pela (assim como beneficiou) implementação prévia de um componente que oferece funcionalidades para envio de dados multimodais para um receptor de TV digital contendo o middleware Ginga, e de um componente que, instalado no receptor, permite a comunicação peer-to-peer entre dispositivos sem fio / The tradicional Brazilian TV system is being replaced by an interactive digital platform. The Ginga middleware, responsible for allowing the presentation of interactive programs, is able to support user interactions with TV applications by means of key presses on a remote control. Since traditional remotes have usability limitations, this work aimed at investigating the application of ubiquitous computing concepts, such as natural and multimodal interfaces, to provide alternatives for the interaction among users and TV applications. Considering the availability of mobile devices such as smartphones, prototype interfaces based on touch screens, as well as gesture-based, accelerometer-based, and voice-based interfaces have been designed and implemented to allow the interaction usually provided by remote controls. The implementation of those interfaces was supported by the previous development of components providing multimodal interaction and peer-to-peer communication in the context of the Brazilian interactive digital TV system middleware