Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper presents a tool suite (made up of two previously unrelated approaches) for the engineering of multimodal Post-WIMP Interactive Systems. The first element of this integration is ICOM (a data-flow model dedicated to low-level input modelling) and its environment ICON which allows for editing and simulating ICOM models. The other element is ICOs (a formal description technique mainly dedicated to dialogue modelling) and its environment PetShop which allows for editing, simulating and verifying ICOs models. This paper shows how these two approaches have been integrated and how they support multimodal interactive systems engineering. We show on a classical rubber banding case study how these tools can be used for prototyping interactive systems. We also present in details how the changes in the interaction techniques impact the models at various levels of the software architecture.

USer Interface eXtensible Markup Language (USIXML) consists in a User Interface Description Language (UIDL) allowing designers to apply a multi-path development of user interfaces. In this development paradigm, a user interface can be specified and produced at and from different, and possibly multiple, levels of abstraction while maintaining the mappings between these levels if required. Thus, the development process can be initiated from any level of abstraction and proceed towards obtaining one or many final user interfaces for various contexts of use at other levels of abstraction. In this way, the model-to-model transformation, which is the cornerstone of Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), can be supported in multiple configurations, based on composition of three basic transformation types: abstraction, reification, and translation.

Variation in different mobile devices with different capabilities and interaction modalities as well as changing user context in nomadic applications, poses huge challenges to the design of user interfaces. To avoid multiple designs for each device or modality, it is almost a must to employ a model-based approach. In this short paper, we present a new dialog model for multimodal interaction together with an advanced control model, which can either be used for direct modeling by an interface designer or in conjunction with higher level models.

The use of design patterns as a methodical approach to codifying and communicating design knowledge and best practice solutions has become popular in software engineering and, more recently, also in the field of human computer interaction (e.g. [Tidwell, 1999], [Borchers, 2001], [Lyardet et al., 1999] and [van Duyne et al., 2002]). Existing HCI pattern collections, however, often appear rather unsystematic and arbitrarily composed, lacking the quality of a coherent pattern language that some authors have demanded. To address this problem, we propose a stronger conceptual integration of the notions and . Design spaces allow to explore potential design solutions along the values of one or more defined dimensions. We aim at systematizing design patterns by allocating (or deriving) them in (or from) design spaces. This approach allows to not only categorize existing patterns, but also to derive new patterns (which may subsequently be analyzed for their usability).

New display technologies will enable designers to use every surface as a support for interaction with information technology. In this article, we describe techniques and tools for enabling efficient man-machine interaction in computer augmented multi-surface environments. We focus on explicit interaction, in which the user decides when and where to interact with the system. We present three interaction techniques using simple actuators: fingers, a laser pointer, and a rectangular piece of cardboard. We describe a graphical control interface constructed from an automatically generated and maintained environment model. We implement both the automatic model acquisition and the interaction techniques using a Steerable Camera-Projector (SCP) system.

Tactile memory is the crucial factor in coding and transfer of the semantic information through a single vibrator. While some simulators can produce strong vibro-tactile sensations, discrimination of several tactile patterns can remain quite poor. Currently used actuators, such as shaking motor, have also technological and methodological restrictions. We designed a vibro-tactile pen and software to create tactons and semantic sequences of vibro-tactile patterns on mobile devices (iPAQ pocket PC). We proposed special games and techniques to simplify learning and manipulating vibro-tactile patterns. The technique for manipulating vibro-tactile sequences is based on gesture recognition and spatial-temporal mapping for imaging vibro-tactile signals. After training, the tactons could be used as awareness cues or the system of non-verbal communication signals.

Many of the difficulties users experience when working with interactive systems arise from misfits between the user’s conceptualisation of the domain and device with which they are working and the conceptualisation implemented within those systems. We report an analytical technique called CASSM (Concept-based Analysis for Surface and Structural Misfits) in which such misfits can be formally represented to assist in understanding, describing and reasoning about them. CASSM draws on the framework of Cognitive Dimensions (CDs) in which many types of misfit were classified and presented descriptively, with illustrative examples. CASSM allows precise definitions of many of the CDs, expressed in terms of entities, attributes, actions and relationships. These definitions have been implemented in Cassata, a tool for automated analysis of misfits, which we introduce and describe in some detail.

This paper discusses the role of an enhanced extended lexicon as a shared communicative artifact during software design. We describe how it may act as an interlingua that captures the shared understanding of both stakeholders and designers. We argue for the need to address communicative concerns among design team members, as well as from designers to users through the user interface. We thus extend an existing lexicon language (LEL) to address communication-oriented concerns that user interface designers need to take into account when representing their solution to end users. We propose that the enhanced LEL may be used as a valuable resource in model-based design, in modeling the help system, and in engineering the user interface elements and widgets.

This work is aimed at the specification of usable adaptive user interfaces. A model-based method is used, which have been proved useful to address this task. The specification created is described in terms of abstract interaction objects, which are translated into concrete interaction objects for each particular platform. An adaptive engine is also proposed to improve the usability at runtime by means of a multi-agent system.

Pervasive computing systems are interactive systems in the large, whose behaviour must adapt to the user’s changing tasks and environment using different interface modalities and devices. Since the system adapts to its changing environment, it is vital that there are close links between the structure of the environment and the corresponding structured behavioural changes. We conjecture that predictability in pervasive computing arises from having a close, structured and easily-grasped relationship between the context and the behavioural change that context engenders. In current systems this relationship is not explicitly articulated but instead exists implicitly in the system’s reaction to events. Our aim is to capture the relationship in a way that can be used to both pervasive computing systems and aid their . Moreover, some applications will have a wide range of behaviours; others will vary less, or more subtly. The point is not so much as how what it does . In this paper we address the principles and semantics that underpin truly pervasive systems.