Exploring design trade-offs for achieving social inclusion in multi-tiered design problems

ABSTRACT

The digital age of the future is ‘not out there to be discovered’, but it needs to be ‘designed’. The design challenge has to address questions about how we want to live, work, and learn (as individuals and as communities) and what we value and appreciate, e.g.: reflecting on quality of life and creating inclusive societies. An overriding design trade-off for the digital age is whether new developments will increase the digital divide or will create more inclusive societies. Sustaining inclusive societies means allowing people of all ages and all abilities to exploit information technologies for personally meaningful activities. Meta-design fosters the design of socio-technical environments that end-user developers can modify and evolve at use time to improve their quality of life and favour their inclusion in the society. This paper describes three case studies in the domain of assistive technologies in which end users themselves cannot act as end-user developers, but someone else (e.g.: a caregiver or a clinician) must accept this role requiring multi-tiered architectures. The design trade-offs and requirements for meta-design identified in the context of the case studies and other researchers’ projects are described to inform the development of future socio-technical environments focused on social inclusion.     

An original approximate method for estimating the invariant probability distribution of a large class of multi-dimensional nonlinear stochastic oscillators

This paper proposes an original method for obtaining analytical approximations of the invariant probability density function of multi-dimensional Hamiltonian dissipative dynamic systems under Gaussian white noise excitations, with linear non-conservative parts and nonlinear conservative parts. The method is based on an exact result and a heuristic argument. Its pertinence is attested by numerical tests.     

A universal design resource for rich Internet applications based on design patterns

Rich Internet applications have removed most of the constraints of Web 1.0 while giving users more responsiveness and advanced browsing and interaction experiences. These new horizons, however, raise many challenges for people with disabilities or using limited hardware and software technologies, whose risk to be excluded from the benefits deriving from advanced web applications. To address this problem, WCAG 2.0 guidelines have been released as the newest World Wide Web Consortium recommendation for accessible web content, and WAI-ARIA is a candidate recommendation which provides reference specifications for accessible rich Internet applications. However, both specifications contain a huge amount of information that often discourages most web designers from dealing with accessibility issues. Moreover, guidelines are suitable and usually adopted to judge a design solution a posteriori, but they do not suggest how to face a design problem constructively. This paper proposes a design pattern language for accessibility. The language can be regarded as a universal design resource for helping web designers create accessible rich Internet applications compliant with the most recent standards. Knowledge representation through design patterns reflects the problem-solving approach usually followed by software and web designers, while pattern organization in a structured language aims to guide web designers throughout the design process. The language has been implemented as an accessible rich Internet application itself, thus allowing designers with disabilities to participate in web design. In order to evaluate the design pattern language, a three-step process was carried out including: (1) a heuristic analysis with a group of human–computer interaction experts, (2) a survey study with a group of web designers, and (3) a validation on the field with two designers who have been requested to apply the language in real design cases.     

Rule-based tools for the configuration of ambient intelligence systems: a comparative user study

Multimedia Tools and Applications - This paper describes a 63-participant user study that compares two widely known systems supporting end users in creating trigger-action rules for the Internet of...     

Toward overcoming culture, skill and situation hurdles in Human-Computer Interaction

This paper proposes a new effective strategy for designing and implementing interactive systems overcoming culture, skill and situation hurdles in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The strategy to identify and reduce these hurdles is developed in the framework of a methodology based on a recently introduced model of HCI, and exploits the technological innovations of XML (Extensible Markup Language). HCI is modelled as a cyclic process in which the user and the interactive system communicate by materializing and interpreting a sequence of messages. The interaction process is formalized by specifying both the physical message appearance and the computational aspect of the interaction. This formalization allows the adoption of notation traditionally adopted by users in their workplaces as the starting point of the interactive system design. In this way, the human–system interaction language takes into account the users’ culture. Moreover, the methodology permits user representatives to build a hierarchy of systems progressively adapted to users’ situations, skills and habits, according to the work organization in the domain considered. The strategy is proved to be effective by describing how to implement it using BANCO (Browsing Adaptive Network for Changing user Operativity), a feasibility prototype based on XML, which allows the hierarchy implementation and system adaptations. Several examples from an environmental case under study are used throughout the paper to illustrate the methodology and the effectiveness of the technology adopted. Published online: 4 June 2002     

A probabilistic approach for estimating the behavior of railway tracks

Railway engineering is confronted with problems due to degradation of the rail network that requires important and costly maintenance work. However, because of lack of knowledge on the geometrical and mechanical parameters of the track, it is difficult to optimize maintenance management. In this context, this paper presents a new methodology to analyze the behavior of railway tracks. It combines new diagnostic devices which permit to obtain an important amount of data and thus to make statistics on the geometric and mechanical parameters and a non-intrusive stochastic approach which can be coupled with any mechanical model. Numerical results show the possibilities of this methodology for parametric studies (influence of the distribution and of the correlation of the parameters...). In the future this approach will give important informations to railway managers to optimize maintenance operations.     

Further exploration of typical and maximum performance criteria: Definitional issues, prediction, and White-Black differences.

Addresses differences between typical and maximum performance criteria with a threefold purpose. First, the growing recognition that it is important to distinguish between typical and maximum performance criteria is examined. Second, clarification of definitional and measurement issues are addressed. Third, results of an empirical study are offered to contribute to the new knowledge base regarding typical and maximum performance criteria. The study investigates differences in validities of cognitive ability predictor measures against supermarket cashier typical and maximum performance criteria reflecting speed and accuracy. White–Black mean score differences on typical and maximum performance criteria are also examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relations between measures of typical and maximum job performance.

In this study we proposed that understanding of interrelations among criterion measures can be improved by differentiating between measures of typical and maximum job performance. We offered defining characteristics of typical and maximum performance measures and requirements for a fair examination of relations between the two. Typical and maximum performance measures of the speed and accuracy with which supermarket cashiers process items were obtained from two large samples (Ns?=?635 and 735) of cashiers from 12 supermarket chains. Relatively low correlations between typical and maximum performance measures were found. We discuss the implications of these findings for the use of maximum performance measures as criteria in the validation of selection systems and for the understanding of the impact of ability and motivation on job performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling robot cognitive activity through active mental entities

This paper aims at laying down the foundations of an approach to the development of autonomous robot control architecture based on the explicit representation of mental attitudes underlying robot behavior, considered as autonomous active entities. The approach is intended to integrate concepts from the area of distributed architectures and of mental attitude representation and aims at realizing an explicit motivational basis for robot behavior. Starting from an analysis of the evolution of autonomous robot control architectures, we discuss and motivate the introduction of active mental entities in the context of a distributed control architecture. Attention is then focused on two classes of mental entities, namely intender and attender: their main features are illustrated and discussed. A prototypical implementation of the proposed paradigm and its application to the control of the Khepera simulator are then described. A comparison with related works and a discussion of the main directions of future research conclude the paper.