Aplicações de captura e acesso exploram o paradigma de computação ubíqua --- que consiste em popular o ambiente com aplicações e dispositivos computacionais a fim de auxiliar transparentemente as pessoas na realização de suas atividades --- para dar apoio à captura automática de informação em experiências ``ao vivo' e à correspondente geração de documentos passíveis de armazenamento, recuperação, visualização e extensão ao longo do tempo. Devido à sua natureza distribuída, à heterogeneidade dos dispositivos computacionais envolvidos e à diversidade nas funcionalidades providas, essas aplicações são difíceis de se construir e requerem infra-estruturas e serviços de software que auxiliem o desenvolvedor nessa tarefa. Este trabalho investiga a construção e o uso de aplicações de captura e acesso por meio do desenvolvimento da xINCA, uma infra-estrutura estendida baseada em componentes de software reutilizáveis que englobam as funcionalidades recorrentes nessa classe de aplicações. A xINCA é uma extensão da infra-estrutura INCA --- uma infra-estrutura de baixo nível que provê abstrações de comunicação para aplicações de captura e acesso. Complementares, as infra-estruturas INCA e xINCA provêem um modelo simplificado para o desenvolvimento de aplicações de captura e acesso, considerando aspectos de projeto, implementação e reuso. Associada ao modelo de armazenamento do serviço StRES, a xINCA tem ainda papel na estruturação da informação capturada com o uso de XML e tecnologias correlatas. / Capture and access applications explore the ubiquitous computing paradigm --- that basically consists on populating the environment with computational devices and applications to transparently assist people on their activities --- to support the automatic capture of information on live experiences and generate corresponding documents that can be further stored, retrieved, visualized and extended. Due to their distributed nature, heterogeneity of involved devices and variety of provided functionalities, capture and access applications are hard to build and require software infrastructures and services that help the developer out on his task. This work investigates the building and use of capture and access applications through the development of xINCA, a component-based software infrastructure comprising the most common func-tio-na-li-ties present in such a class of applications. xINCA is an extension of INCA --- a low-level infrastructure that provides communication abstractions for capture and access applications. Complementary, INCA and xINCA provide a simplified model for the development of capture and access applications, concerning design, implementation and reuse aspects. Allied with the StRES storage model, xINCA also plays an important role on the structuring of captured information by using XML and corresponding technologies.

Peoples daily lives and experiences often contain memories and information that they may want to recall again at a later time. Human memory, however, has its limitations and many times it alone may not be sufficient. People sometimes have difficulty recalling salient information and can forget important details over time. To complement what they can remember naturally, people must expend much time and manual effort to record desired content from their lives for future retrieval. Unfortunately, manual methods for capturing information are far from ideal. Over the years, ubiquitous computing researchers have constructed devices and applications to support the automated capture of live experiences and access to those records. At Georgia Tech, we have also investigated the benefits of automated capture and access in over half a dozen projects since 1995. As we encountered challenges in developing these systems, we began to understand how the difficulty of building capture and access systems can prevent exploration of the hard issues intertwined with understanding how capture impacts our everyday lives. These challenges illustrate the need for support structures in building this class of ubiquitous computing systems. This dissertation presents a set of abstractions for a conceptual framework and a focused design process that encourages designers to decompose the design of capture and access applications into a set of concerns that will be easier to develop and to manage. In addition, an implementation of the framework called the INCA Toolkit is discussed, along with a number of capture and access applications that have been built with it. These applications illustrate how the toolkit is used in practice and supports explorations of the capture and access design space.

Direct observation of the child remains an essential part of the gold standard clinical practice in the diagnosis, assessment, and treatment planning for children with Autism and related developmental conditions. Clinical professionals acknowledge that observing behavior in the natural environment is crucial to obtain an accurate and comprehensive assessment of child behavior. However, direct observation in the natural environment is not feasible for wide-scale implementation into clinical practice. Another key challenge with respect to autism diagnosis is that there is significant time lag (about 20-60 months) between age at which parents first get concerned and the age at which the child finally gets diagnosed. Delay in diagnosis can lead to delay in invaluable early interventions which could impact a child’s future developmental outcomes. A capture and access solution can play a role to fill these gaps. This thesis presents the design, development, and evaluation of a Clinician-directed Capture and Access System that can enable parents to easily collect in-home behavior specimens that have clinical utility and clinicians to use this data to complete a diagnostic assessment for autism. Analogous to a traditional lab specimen collection and assessment procedure, this approach involves three steps: 1) the clinician’s prescription of behavior specimens to be collected; 2) in-home collection and remote sharing of prescribed behavior specimens by parents; and 3) diagnostic assessment of behavior specimens by a remote and qualified clinician. The contributions of this thesis are as follows: a) identified potential opportunities and challenges specific to the design and adoption of a technology solution that enables in-home behavior specimen collection and diagnostic assessment for autism; b) identified key features and functionalities of a smart-phone based Capture System that can enable parents to easy collect in-home behavior specimens that have clinical utility; c) identified key features and functionalities of the web-based Access System that facilitate clinicians to complete remote diagnostic assessment based on in-home behavior specimens.; d) demonstrated through an end-to-end study with parents and clinicians that parents can easily capture behavior specimens through the Capture System and clinicians can complete remote autism diagnostic assessment based on in-home behavior specimens via the Access System.

Aplicações de captura e acesso exploram o paradigma de computação ubíqua --- que consiste em popular o ambiente com aplicações e dispositivos computacionais a fim de auxiliar transparentemente as pessoas na realização de suas atividades --- para dar apoio à captura automática de informação em experiências ``ao vivo' e à correspondente geração de documentos passíveis de armazenamento, recuperação, visualização e extensão ao longo do tempo. Devido à sua natureza distribuída, à heterogeneidade dos dispositivos computacionais envolvidos e à diversidade nas funcionalidades providas, essas aplicações são difíceis de se construir e requerem infra-estruturas e serviços de software que auxiliem o desenvolvedor nessa tarefa. Este trabalho investiga a construção e o uso de aplicações de captura e acesso por meio do desenvolvimento da xINCA, uma infra-estrutura estendida baseada em componentes de software reutilizáveis que englobam as funcionalidades recorrentes nessa classe de aplicações. A xINCA é uma extensão da infra-estrutura INCA --- uma infra-estrutura de baixo nível que provê abstrações de comunicação para aplicações de captura e acesso. Complementares, as infra-estruturas INCA e xINCA provêem um modelo simplificado para o desenvolvimento de aplicações de captura e acesso, considerando aspectos de projeto, implementação e reuso. Associada ao modelo de armazenamento do serviço StRES, a xINCA tem ainda papel na estruturação da informação capturada com o uso de XML e tecnologias correlatas. / Capture and access applications explore the ubiquitous computing paradigm --- that basically consists on populating the environment with computational devices and applications to transparently assist people on their activities --- to support the automatic capture of information on live experiences and generate corresponding documents that can be further stored, retrieved, visualized and extended. Due to their distributed nature, heterogeneity of involved devices and variety of provided functionalities, capture and access applications are hard to build and require software infrastructures and services that help the developer out on his task. This work investigates the building and use of capture and access applications through the development of xINCA, a component-based software infrastructure comprising the most common func-tio-na-li-ties present in such a class of applications. xINCA is an extension of INCA --- a low-level infrastructure that provides communication abstractions for capture and access applications. Complementary, INCA and xINCA provide a simplified model for the development of capture and access applications, concerning design, implementation and reuse aspects. Allied with the StRES storage model, xINCA also plays an important role on the structuring of captured information by using XML and corresponding technologies.

A computação ubíqua explora o fato de que é possível embutir em um ambiente sistemas computacionais que transparentemente apóiem tarefas cotidianas do usuário. Sistemas desse tipo podem ser aplicados a diferentes domínios contribuindo, por exemplo, com atividades educacionais, médicas ou administrativas. A captura automática de informação em ambientes de computação ubíqua visa documentar atividades cotidianas de modo a possibilitar, posteriormente, o acesso às informações capturadas. O nível de transparência da interação do usuário com as chamadas aplicações ubíquas de captura e acesso é um desafio para projetistas, uma vez que os requisitos da aplicação devem ser conhecidos em profundidade para que a interação usuário-ambiente seja eficiente, eficaz e satisfatória. O trabalho realizado teve por objetivo especificar uma versão da aplicação para comunicação síncrona entre usuários que participem de reuniões distribuídas usando o DiGaE (Distributed Gathering Environment), desenvolver protótipos de interfaces, avaliá-los e sugerir soluções que facilitem a interação do usuário, aproximando o modelo conceitual da aplicação de seu modelo mental. Foram utilizados conceitos de Engenharia de Software para especificação e modelagem do sistema, e de Interação Humano-Computador para o desenvolvimento e a avaliação das interfaces. O projeto realizado orientou a implementação de um protótipo do ambiente DiGaE pela equipe do Projeto TIDIA-Ae, em cujo contexto este trabalho se insere. A principal contribuição do trabalho é um projeto que considera usabilidade em ambientes ubíquos para comunicação remota entre usuários, de modo a tornar a interação fácil, eficiente, eficaz e satisfatória até mesmo para usuários não especialistas em informática / Ubiquitous computing explores the possibility of instrumenting an environment with computational infrastructure that transparently supports users in their daily tasks. This kind of systems can be applied in different contexts contributing in medical, educational or administrative activities, for instance. The automatic capture of information in ubiquitous computing environments aims at documenting daily activities so that the corresponding information can be later accessed for review. Achieving a high level of transparency concerning the user interaction in such environments is a challenge to designers, since many users\' requirements must be gathered so that the user-environment interaction is efficient, effective and satisfactory. The main objective of the work reported is the specification of a version of the DiGaE (Distributed Gathering Environment) application which allows the synchronous communication among remote users in distributed meetings developing interfaces prototypes, evaluating them and suggesting solutions to facilitate users\' interaction. Concepts from Software Engineering were employed to specify and model the application, and Human-Computer Interaction concepts were employed to develop and evaluate the interfaces. The project guided the implementation of a DiGaE prototype by TIDIA-Ae Project team, in which context this work is inserted. The main contribution of this work is a project which considers usability in ubiquitous distributed gathering environments in order to make the interaction easy, efficient, effective and satisfactory, even for non-expert users

This research focuses on the development and study of socially appropriate ways to archive data about important life experiences during unexpected and unstructured situations. This work involves three significant phases: formative studies to understand the data capture needs of particular populations of users in these situations; design and development of a technical architecture for capture and access in these settings coupled with design and development of applications for two specific domain problems; and evaluation of this solution as it pertains to these domain problems. The underlying solution presented in this dissertation is known as selective archiving, in which services are always on and available for recording but require some explicit action to archive data. If no such action is taken, recorded data is deleted automatically after a specified time. Selectively archived segments of data can provide an efficient way to recover and to analyze high quality data that traditionally available. The projects presented in this dissertation provide insight about the ways in which we can support record-keeping in informal and unstructured settings. Furthermore, when examined together, these projects provide a view into the larger generalized problem of unstructured capture and access and the acceptability of capture technologies. These considerations evolved into a set of seven tensions surrounding recording technologies that are presented in this dissertation. Furthermore, the experiences surrounding the deployment and evaluation of selective archiving technologies demonstrate the ways in which people use different types of knowledge and cues from the world to determine their reactions to and adoption of such technologies.

The care of individuals with concerns about development, health, and wellness is often a difficult, complicated task and may rely on a team of diverse caregivers. There are many decisions that caregivers must make to help ensure that the best care and health monitoring are administered. For my dissertation work, I have explored the use of embedded capture and access to support decision-making for caregivers. Embedded capture and access integrates simple and unobtrusive capture and useful access, including trending information and rich data, into existing work practices. I hypothesized that this technology encourages more frequent access to evidence, increased collaboration amongst caregivers, and decisions made with higher confidence. I have explored this technology through real world deployments of new embedded capture and access applications in two domains. For the first domain, I have developed two applications to support decision-making for caregivers administering therapy to children with autism. The first application, Abaris, supports therapists working with a single child in a home setting, and the second application, Abaris for Schools, extends the ideas of Abaris for use in a school setting for many teachers working with multiple children. The second domain I have explored is decision-making for parents of newborn children. In particular, I developed and evaluated embedded capture and access technology to support parents, pediatricians, and secondary childcare providers in making decisions about whether a child s development is progressing normally in order to promote the earlier detection of developmental delays.

A computação ubíqua explora o fato de que é possível embutir em um ambiente sistemas computacionais que transparentemente apóiem tarefas cotidianas do usuário. Sistemas desse tipo podem ser aplicados a diferentes domínios contribuindo, por exemplo, com atividades educacionais, médicas ou administrativas. A captura automática de informação em ambientes de computação ubíqua visa documentar atividades cotidianas de modo a possibilitar, posteriormente, o acesso às informações capturadas. O nível de transparência da interação do usuário com as chamadas aplicações ubíquas de captura e acesso é um desafio para projetistas, uma vez que os requisitos da aplicação devem ser conhecidos em profundidade para que a interação usuário-ambiente seja eficiente, eficaz e satisfatória. O trabalho realizado teve por objetivo especificar uma versão da aplicação para comunicação síncrona entre usuários que participem de reuniões distribuídas usando o DiGaE (Distributed Gathering Environment), desenvolver protótipos de interfaces, avaliá-los e sugerir soluções que facilitem a interação do usuário, aproximando o modelo conceitual da aplicação de seu modelo mental. Foram utilizados conceitos de Engenharia de Software para especificação e modelagem do sistema, e de Interação Humano-Computador para o desenvolvimento e a avaliação das interfaces. O projeto realizado orientou a implementação de um protótipo do ambiente DiGaE pela equipe do Projeto TIDIA-Ae, em cujo contexto este trabalho se insere. A principal contribuição do trabalho é um projeto que considera usabilidade em ambientes ubíquos para comunicação remota entre usuários, de modo a tornar a interação fácil, eficiente, eficaz e satisfatória até mesmo para usuários não especialistas em informática / Ubiquitous computing explores the possibility of instrumenting an environment with computational infrastructure that transparently supports users in their daily tasks. This kind of systems can be applied in different contexts contributing in medical, educational or administrative activities, for instance. The automatic capture of information in ubiquitous computing environments aims at documenting daily activities so that the corresponding information can be later accessed for review. Achieving a high level of transparency concerning the user interaction in such environments is a challenge to designers, since many users\' requirements must be gathered so that the user-environment interaction is efficient, effective and satisfactory. The main objective of the work reported is the specification of a version of the DiGaE (Distributed Gathering Environment) application which allows the synchronous communication among remote users in distributed meetings developing interfaces prototypes, evaluating them and suggesting solutions to facilitate users\' interaction. Concepts from Software Engineering were employed to specify and model the application, and Human-Computer Interaction concepts were employed to develop and evaluate the interfaces. The project guided the implementation of a DiGaE prototype by TIDIA-Ae Project team, in which context this work is inserted. The main contribution of this work is a project which considers usability in ubiquitous distributed gathering environments in order to make the interaction easy, efficient, effective and satisfactory, even for non-expert users

Aplicações de captura e acesso (C&A) exploram o paradigma de computação ubíqua para dar apoio à captura automática de informação em experiências ao vivo e à correspondente geração de documentos passíveis de armazenamento, recuperação, visualização e extensão ao longo do tempo. Essas aplicações são potencialmente capazes de simplificar o processo de autoria de documentos multimídia visto que permitem a combinação e a sincronização automáticas de informação coletada por sistemas computacionais de uso pessoal e coletivo disseminados no ambiente. Aplicações de C&A também tornam possível a incorporação de sistemas de software que utilizem a capacidade computacional instalada para apoiar atividades humanas em andamento, promovendo novas formas de colaboração e de interação entre seus participantes e permitindo o registro dos acontecimentos, a geração de documentos que possibilitem sua reconstituição e o compartilhamento dos artefatos capturados. Este trabalho aborda de maneira conjunta diferentes aspectos envolvidos na captura automatizada de atividades humanas. Primeiramente, estende-se a visão tradicional com a sugestão da captura automatizada não apenas de mídias convencionais, mas do processo interativo do usuário como um todo, de modo a permitir a autoria e a personalização de conteúdo digital interativo e das anotações associadas. Ao mesmo tempo, são tratados aspectos colaborativos com o desenvolvimento e o uso de uma infra-estrutura distribuída de comunicação. Baseada em uma plataforma de computação peer-to-peer, os componentes e os serviços implementados suportam atividades de colaboração e compartilhamento de conteúdo entre os usuários. É feita experimentação das propostas com sua aplicação em cenários reais de ambientes de aprendizado, de computação móvel e de TV digital interativa / Capture and access (C&A) applications explore the ubiquitous computing paradigm to support the automated capture of information in live experiences and the corresponding generation of documents that can be stored, retrieved, visualized and extended along time. These applications are potentially capable of simplifying the authoring of multimedia documents by allowing the automatic combination and synchronization of information collected using personal and shared computational devices available in the environment. C&A applications also bring the opportunity for the incorporation of software systems that use such installed computational base to support on-going human activities, promoting new forms of collaboration and interaction among their users and enabling the recording of events, the generation of documents allowing their reconstitution and the sharing of the captured artifacts. This thesis addresses in a joint manner the different issues involved with the automated capture of human activities. First, the traditional vision is extended with the suggestion of automatically capturing not only conventional medias, but the general user interactive process as a whole, allowing the authoring and customization of interactive digital content and associated annotations. At the same time, collaborative aspects are treated with the development and use of a distributed communication infrastructure. Based on a peer-to-peer computing platform, the proposed components and services support collaborative activities and content sharing among users. The resulting systems and abstractions are experimented through their use in real scenarios comprising learning, mobile computing and interactive digital TV environments

Aplicações de captura e acesso (C&A) exploram o paradigma de computação ubíqua para dar apoio à captura automática de informação em experiências ao vivo e à correspondente geração de documentos passíveis de armazenamento, recuperação, visualização e extensão ao longo do tempo. Essas aplicações são potencialmente capazes de simplificar o processo de autoria de documentos multimídia visto que permitem a combinação e a sincronização automáticas de informação coletada por sistemas computacionais de uso pessoal e coletivo disseminados no ambiente. Aplicações de C&A também tornam possível a incorporação de sistemas de software que utilizem a capacidade computacional instalada para apoiar atividades humanas em andamento, promovendo novas formas de colaboração e de interação entre seus participantes e permitindo o registro dos acontecimentos, a geração de documentos que possibilitem sua reconstituição e o compartilhamento dos artefatos capturados. Este trabalho aborda de maneira conjunta diferentes aspectos envolvidos na captura automatizada de atividades humanas. Primeiramente, estende-se a visão tradicional com a sugestão da captura automatizada não apenas de mídias convencionais, mas do processo interativo do usuário como um todo, de modo a permitir a autoria e a personalização de conteúdo digital interativo e das anotações associadas. Ao mesmo tempo, são tratados aspectos colaborativos com o desenvolvimento e o uso de uma infra-estrutura distribuída de comunicação. Baseada em uma plataforma de computação peer-to-peer, os componentes e os serviços implementados suportam atividades de colaboração e compartilhamento de conteúdo entre os usuários. É feita experimentação das propostas com sua aplicação em cenários reais de ambientes de aprendizado, de computação móvel e de TV digital interativa / Capture and access (C&A) applications explore the ubiquitous computing paradigm to support the automated capture of information in live experiences and the corresponding generation of documents that can be stored, retrieved, visualized and extended along time. These applications are potentially capable of simplifying the authoring of multimedia documents by allowing the automatic combination and synchronization of information collected using personal and shared computational devices available in the environment. C&A applications also bring the opportunity for the incorporation of software systems that use such installed computational base to support on-going human activities, promoting new forms of collaboration and interaction among their users and enabling the recording of events, the generation of documents allowing their reconstitution and the sharing of the captured artifacts. This thesis addresses in a joint manner the different issues involved with the automated capture of human activities. First, the traditional vision is extended with the suggestion of automatically capturing not only conventional medias, but the general user interactive process as a whole, allowing the authoring and customization of interactive digital content and associated annotations. At the same time, collaborative aspects are treated with the development and use of a distributed communication infrastructure. Based on a peer-to-peer computing platform, the proposed components and services support collaborative activities and content sharing among users. The resulting systems and abstractions are experimented through their use in real scenarios comprising learning, mobile computing and interactive digital TV environments