With the rapid growth of online devices, a new concept of Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging in which everyday devices will be connected to the Internet. As the number of devices in IoT is increasing, so is the complexity of the interactions between user and devices. There is a need to design intelligent user interfaces that could assist users in interactions. Many studies have been conducted on different interaction techniques such as proxemic and gesture interaction in order to propose an intuitive and intelligent system for controlling multimedia devices over the IoT, though most could not propose a universal solution. The present study proposes a proximity-based and gesture-enabled user interface for multimedia devices over IoT. The proposed method employs a cloud-based decision engine to support user to choose and interact with the most appropriate device, reliving the user from the burden of enumerating available devices manually. The decision engine observes the multimedia content and device properties, learns user preferences adaptively, and automatically recommends the most appropriate device to interact. In addition to that, the proposed system uses proximity information to find the user among people and provides her/him gesture control services. Furthermore, a new hand gesture vocabulary is proposed for controlling multimedia devices through conducting a multiphase elicitation study. The main advantage of this vocabulary is that it can be used for all multimedia devices. Both device recommendation system and gesture vocabulary are evaluated. The device recommendation system evaluation shows that the users agree with the proposed interaction 70% of the times. Moreover, the average agreement score of the proposed gesture vocabulary (0.56) exceeds the score of similar studies. An external user evaluation study shows that the average score of being a good-match is 4.08 out of 5 and the average of ease-of-performance equals to 4.21 out of 5. The memory test reveals that the proposed vocabulary is easy to remember since participants could remember and perform gestures in 3.13 seconds on average. In addition to that, the average accuracy of remembering gestures equals to 91.54%.

From a population of 160 children, 59 were sociometrically viii identified into four categories : popular, amiable , isolated, and rejected . Same-sexed pairs of children 1·1ere t hen observed in an experimental play situation in which two experimenters, using a computerized event recorder, obtained the amount of time each identified child spent at various distances (0-305 cm) from the confederate. Frequency of moves was also recorded. A general pattern of proxemic behavior for all children, across category, was found to exist in which subjects spent the majority of time at distances of 30.5 cm to 122 cm and very little time at greater distances. Analyses of the data also produced differences in proxemic behavior between categories: the popular children spent the majority of their session time close to the confederates (0 to 91.5 cm), and very little time at greater distances. The rejected children made attempts to maintain close distances to their peers but were rejected by the other children which led to a large proportion of time being spent further away from the confederates (152 .5 to 305 cm). The amiable children spent the majority of their time at intermediate distances of 31.5 to 244 cm and the isolated children maintained the longest durations of tine at the greatest distances for all four categories. These findings were discussed in relation to Hall's1 theory of adult personal space zones.

To facilitate necessary task-based interactions and to avoid annoying or upsetting people a domestic robot will have to exhibit appropriate non-verbal social behaviour. Most current robots have the ability to sense and control for the distance of people and objects in their vicinity. An understanding of human robot proxemic and associated non-verbal social behaviour is crucial for humans to accept robots as domestic or servants. Therefore, this thesis addressed the following hypothesis: Attributes of robot appearance, behaviour, task context and situation will affect the distances that people will find comfortable between themselves and a robot. Initial exploratory Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) experiments replicated human-human studies into comfortable approach distances with a mechanoid robot in place of one of the human interactors. It was found that most human participants respected the robot's interpersonal space and there were systematic differences for participants' comfortable approach distances to robots with different voice styles. It was proposed that greater initial comfortable approach distances to the robot were due to perceived inconsistencies between the robots overall appearance and voice style. To investigate these issues further it was necessary to develop HRI experimental set-ups, a novel Video-based HRI (VHRI) trial methodology, trial data collection methods and analytical methodologies. An exploratory VHRI trial then investigated human perceptions and preferences for robot appearance and non-verbal social behaviour. The methodological approach highlighted the holistic and embodied nature of robot appearance and behaviour. Findings indicated that people tend to rate a particular behaviour less favourably when the behaviour is not consistent with the robot’s appearance. A live HRI experiment finally confirmed and extended from these previous findings that there were multiple factors which significantly affected participants preferences for robot to human approach distances. There was a significant general tendency for participants to prefer either a tall humanoid robot or a short mechanoid robot and it was suggested that this may be due to participants internal or demographic factors. Participants' preferences for robot height and appearance were both found to have significant effects on their preferences for live robot to Human comfortable approach distances, irrespective of the robot type they actually encountered. The thesis confirms for mechanoid or humanoid robots, results that have previously been found in the domain of human-computer interaction (cf. Reeves & Nass (1996)), that people seem to automatically treat interactive artefacts socially. An original empirical human-robot proxemic framework is proposed in which the experimental findings from the study can be unified in the wider context of human-robot proxemics. This is seen as a necessary first step towards the desired end goal of creating and implementing a working robot proxemic system which can allow the robot to: a) exhibit socially acceptable social spatial behaviour when interacting with humans, b) interpret and gain additional valuable insight into a range of HRI situations from the relative proxemic behaviour of humans in the immediate area. Future work concludes the thesis.

Cette recherche a pour but d'étudier le rôle joué par les parties prenantes et plus spécifiquement par l'une d'entre elles, la famille, sur les décisions stratégiques des entrepreneurs de PME/TPE, en étudiant d'éventuelles différences de genre. Le cadre conceptuel retenu est celui des effets de proxémie en PME/TPE tels que définis par Torrès (2003) à partir des travaux en psycho-sociologie de l'espace de Moles et Rohmer (1978). La loi proxémique montre qu'un individu tend à privilégier tout ce qui est proche au détriment de ce qui est lointain. Torrès montre comment les entrepreneurs n'échappent pas à cette loi et comment leurs décisions stratégiques peuvent s'expliquer par ces principes hiérarchiques. Nous testons la validité d'un principe proxémique à partir de la théorie des couches de Gibb (1988) qui propose une hiérarchie des parties prenantes de la PME. L'étude est conduite à partir d'une expérimentation définie par le cadre de l'économie expérimentale. Les résultats ouvrent des perspectives innovantes dans la compréhension des décisions stratégiques des femmes entrepreneures, et mettent en évidence l'intérêt théorique de la loi proxémique pour les étudier à partir de leur réalité propre (Carrier, et al, 2006) et non pas en comparaison aux hommes. / The scope of the research is an analysis of stakeholders' influences on strategic decisions, focusing principally on the role of family, within a gender perspective. The theoretical framework is the proxemic influence in Small Businesses. This framework was defined by Torrès (2003) based on the work of psycho-sociologists Moles and Rohmer (1978). The proxemic theory emphasizes the prevalence of things, people and elements that are close compared to those which are more remote. Torrès shows how strategic decisions of entrepreneurs are embedded by this proxemic influence. We test the validity of this law through the layers of theory defended by Gibb (1988) which identified a hierarchic influence of the stakeholders. The empirical study is based on an experiment structured from the experimental economics field. Men and women entrepreneurs are the subject of the experiment.Results show, innovative opportunities to better understand the strategic decisions of women entrepreneurs. They also highlight the theoretical interest of the proxemic principle to survey women from their own perspective, rather than only from the male comparison.

The main concern of this thesis is examining the affects and causes of traffic oriented design on the social generation of boulevards in terms of communication. For this purpose, boulevard concept and its historical evaluation are explained. In addition, communication is used as a tool for understanding, combining and examining the social and technical structure of boulevard. In this respect, this thesis aims to explore the boulevard concept with the spatial communication measures. To provide empirical evidence, a chart of categories of communication is prepared in terms of human and machine interposed aspects of communication. The activities of relation along the boulevard are examined by transversal and longitudinal movements with the help of the behavioral sciences and proxemics and the theoretical relation between boulevard and communication is applied on the case of The Atat&uuml / rk Boulevard, Ankara. It is observed from the findings that, longitudinal movement prior to situated activity is increased, the transversal movement prior to random activity is decreased. This causes the loss of human aspects along the boulevard, which is designed for human.

In 2012 library and museum professionals from 24 different countries met in Salzburg, Austria for the Salzburg Global Seminar. The seminar was entitled Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture. Shortly summarised their views of participatory culture includes low barriers for engagement, strong support for creating, sharing and feeling a social connection with each other. During the seminar it was mentioned that participatory culture usually exists online and that their challenge was in creating experiences that work both online and offline and allow for meaningful participation.Contemporary examples of museums working with participatory culture to engage their visitors is presented. Inspired by these examples and working with research through design as main method technology experiments and prototypes are conducted to develop a concept. Findings from this iterative process leads to a final concept that has the potential to engage museum visitors both online and offline. In one part of this concept museum visitors explores a narrative in a physical interactive exhibition. Visitors proxemic relations to objects and other people is used to trigger media and unfold the full story in a room. In the end of the prototype visitors are asked to write a physical postcard that is also published on a web page.The final concept presented can be scaled and customised to suit many different scenarios and context. When structuring the narratives clear instructions guiding visitors through the experience should be included. The people who were invited to try this prototype all created content and were curios to know what other people had written.

L’informatique ubiquitaire est graduellement devenue une réalité, nous utilisons divers dispositifs pour travailler et s’amuser (l’ordinateur, le portable, le smartphone). Au-delà des dispositifs personnels, les citoyens obtiennent des informations par les écrans publics qui sont présents partout dans les villes: l’abribus, l’aéroport, le centre commercial, etc. Il semble que la vision de l’informatique ubiquitaire est plus proche, cependant, l’avenir décrit par Mark Weiser est encore loin: «les technologies les plus profondes sont celles qui disparaissent». Actuellement les appareils électroniques ne sont pas assez intelligents et bien intégrés dans le contexte d’une ville. La ville intelligente (smart city) est un concept émergent pour construire une ville utilisant les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC). Ce concept propose d’améliorer la qualité de la vie et d’augmenter l’efficacité des activités dans une ville par les TIC. Il aussi met l’accent sur les savoir-faire des citoyens pour la construction des villes. La ville intelligente est en effet un système ubiquitaire large qui comprend différent systèmes (le système de gestion trafic, le système de transport public, le système de distribution de l’énergie, etc.). Les écrans publics construisent l’une des plus importants systèmes dans une ville. Cependant, ils ne sont utilisés que pour afficher de l’information, ils sont aveugles aux utilisateurs ainsi qu’à leurs dispositifs personnels. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons de construire des écrans publics intelligents basés sur l’interaction proxémique. L’interaction proxémique est inspirée par le terme venant de la psychologie «Proxémique». La Proxémique désigne les espaces virtuels autour des êtres humains pendant la communication. Les espaces sont différents selon la culture, les lieux où l’interaction se déroule. La Proxémique a été introduite à l’interaction homme machine par S. Greenberg en 2011 et il a créé le terme d’interaction proxémique. L’interaction proxémique étudie l’interaction en fonction de la relation spatiale entre les objets. Un écran proxémique peut connaître la distance, la position, l’identité et le mouvement de l’utilisateur. Ces dimensions proxémiques sont mesurées par l’écran comme les signaux de l’interaction implicite. Par ailleurs, il peut détecter les dispositifs mobiles des utilisateurs: il peut distribuer et échanger de l’information avec les dispositifs de l’environnement. Par rapport à un écran traditionnel, un écran proxémique offre des contenus plus personnalisés et ainsi répond aux besoins immédiats des utilisateurs. Ces avantages permettent à un écran public de bien s’adapter aux exigences de la ville intelligente. Notre objectif est d’étudier la façon de relever les défis d’un écran public dans une ville intelligente par l’interaction proxémique. Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous étudions les dimensions de l’interaction proxémique, et puis nous concevons un prototype d’écran proxémique grâce à différents capteurs: Kinect, Leapmotion et Webcam. Ce prototype supporte l’interaction implicite et explicite des utilisateurs pour fournir un contenu plus personnalisé aux utilisateurs, ainsi que des interactions naturelles. En outre, nous avons développé une boîte à outils pour la migration des données entre l’écran public et les appareils mobiles personnels. Avec cet outil, l’utilisateur peut télécharger des ressources à partir de l’écran, et l’écran deviendra un terminal pour recueillir les connaissances des citoyens pour la ville intelligente. Nous discutons les applications potentielles de ce prototype dans la ville intelligente, et nous proposons une application expérimentale qui est un panneau d’affichage proxémique des vols dans un aéroport. Basé sur cette application, nous avons réalisé des études utilisateurs systématiques dans notre laboratoire pour vérifier si l’interaction proxémique peut vraiment améliorer les performances d’un écran public. / Ubiquitous computing is gradually coming into reality, people use various digital devices (personal computer, laptop, tablet and smartphone) in order to study, work, entertain and communicate with each other. A city is actually a ubiquitous society, citizens get practical information from digital public displays that are installed everywhere in a city: bus station, railway station, airport or commercial center, etc. It seems that we are closing to the vision of ubiquitous computing, however, it’s still far from the vision what Mark Weiser described: the most profound technologies are those that disappear, they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. That means in nowadays the widespread digital devices are still not intelligent enough and not well integrated, this issue is especially serious under a context of city than for personal usage condition.Smart city is a modern concept of city that seeks to improve the efficiency and quality of life by the information and communication technologies (ICTs), it as well emphasizes the importance of citizens’ knowledge for the wise management of city. The ICTs of a smart city constructs a large scale ubiquitous system, including traffic control systems, public transportation system, energy control systems, etc. In all the systems, digital public displays are one of the most important viewports that connect citizens with city. However, the public display today is only used as a screen to display information, it’s blind to the presence of users and ambient devices, these result in low efficiency of interactions, and make a city unable to take use of citizen knowledge.In this dissertation, we build an intelligent public display by the theory of proxemic interaction. Proxemic interaction is spatial related interaction patterns inspired by the psychological term: Proxemics, it studies the spatial -related interaction human to device and device to device. A proxemic interactive public display means that it is aware of user’s presence, position, movement, identity and other user related attributes, and takes these attributes as implicit inputs for interactions. Besides, it can sense ambient mobile devices and act as a hub for local deices information flows. Compared with traditional public display, proxemic interactive display can provide specific users with more personal related and instant - need information rather than provide general information to all users. That means to make displays sense users instead of making users explore displays exhaustively. These advantages make a proxemic display more adapt to the prospect of smart city.Our object is to study how to address the challenges of public display in a smart city by proxemic interaction. Towards this object, we study the dimensions of proxemic interaction, and build a prototype of proxemic interactive projected display with Kinect, Leap motion and web camera. This prototype supports implicit and explicit interaction of users to provide more personalized contents to users, as well as natural interactions. Furthermore, we developed a toolkit for data migration between public display and personal mobile devices, so that public display becomes aware of ambient users’ devices, users can download resources from public displays freely, while public displays can be as a terminal to collect knowledge of citizens for smart city.We discuss the potential applications of this prototype under smart city, and build an experimental application of proxemic airport flight information board. Based on this experimental application, we organized a systematic laboratory user study to validate whether proxemic interaction can really improve the performance of public displays

Submitted by Patricia Figuti Venturini (pfiguti@anhembi.br) on 2018-08-20T18:12:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 451412.pdf: 9245919 bytes, checksum: 516d58e32cba3d59b39f9e2ac238ff38 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Patricia Figuti Venturini (pfiguti@anhembi.br) on 2018-08-20T20:27:49Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 451412.pdf: 9245919 bytes, checksum: 516d58e32cba3d59b39f9e2ac238ff38 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Patricia Figuti Venturini (pfiguti@anhembi.br) on 2018-08-21T13:46:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 451412.pdf: 9245919 bytes, checksum: 516d58e32cba3d59b39f9e2ac238ff38 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-21T13:46:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 451412.pdf: 9245919 bytes, checksum: 516d58e32cba3d59b39f9e2ac238ff38 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-22 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The school environment forms a system of values and speeches, in which its users are stimulated to learn. In this context, the present dissertation aims to investigate the relationship between the design of the classroom and the possi- ble interactions and experiences of its users, through the analysis of the spatial arrangements and their potentialities. The research involves bibliographical re- view, articulation of theoretical concepts, contextualization of space and place and an understanding of the classroom as an adaptive complex system. In this approach, three spatial arrangements of classrooms, identified by Scott-Webber (2009) as recurrent in educational institutions, are set up in rigid and fluid en- vironments, analyzed through personal space (SOMMER, 1973) and proxemic zones (HALL, 2006) theories. Therefore, it is possible to trace an activity profile and intention by using each arrangement, in order to promote the desired inte- ractions. It is discussed the rigidity of the projected space and its possibilities of adaptability to the needs of the users. In conclusion, the need to design spaces is more flexible and adaptable to contemporary demands. / O ambiente escolar formata um sistema de valores e discursos, no qual seus usuários são estimulados à aprendizagem. Neste sentido, esta dissertação tem como objetivo investigar a relação entre o design da sala de aula e as possíveis interações e experiências dos usuários, a partir da análise dos arranjos espaciais e suas potencialidades. A pesquisa envolve revisão bibliográfica, articulação dos conceitos teóricos, contextualização acerca de espaço e lugar e compreensão da sala de aula como sistema complexo adaptativo. Nesta abordagem, observa- se três arranjos espaciais de salas de aula, apontadas por Scott-Webber (2009) como recorrentes em instituições de ensino, que configuram ambientes rígidos e fluídos, analisados a partir das teorias de espaço pessoal (SOMMER, 1973) e zonas proxêmicas (HALL, 2006). Assim, é possível traçar um perfil de atividade e intenção com o uso de cada um dos arranjos, a fim de promover as interações desejadas. Discute-se a rigidez do espaço projetado e suas possibilidades de adaptabilidade às necessidades dos usuários. Conclui-se a necessidade de projetar espaços mais flexíveis e adaptáveis às demandas contemporâneas.

J.D. Salinger’s ‘A Girl I Knew,’ ‘Just Before the War with the Eskimos,’ and ‘Blue Melody,’ contain key thematic and narratological elements that contribute to the development of character through repeated reference to tactile imagery and through each character’s reaction to the sensations associated with tactile images. Salinger’s descriptions of tactile interaction allow readers to see his characters connected in ways that were increasingly difficult in the 1950’s, where widespread cultural changes contributed to increasing physical and emotional distancing. Critics have argued that “vision” is at the heart of many of Salinger’s characters’ struggles, since they “seek” a level of human connectedness not found in other narratives. However, Salinger's stories do not provide a mere record of observed physical characteristics as some claim; instead, they present concrete physical details that take both the character and the reader beyond sight to touch, in an effort to create the intimate space necessary for redemption. Using theoretical work by critics who focus on tactile imagery pinpoints how Salinger’s characters situate themselves in relation to the world around them and how setting and other narrative mechanics influence character. Salinger’s attention to tactile imagery influences character in a profound way creating a “narrative of immediacy” where closeness is further reinforced through tactile physical descriptions, attention to gesture, and use of conversational popular vernacular.