E-redesigning of society: towards experiential connectivity of generations in Lithuania

The paper reflects on the unique experience of social and technological development in Lithuania since the regaining of independence as a newly reshaped society constructing a distinctive competitive IST-based model at global level. This has presented Lithuanian pattern of how to integrate different experiences and relations between generations in implementing complex information society approaches. The resulting programme in general is linked to the Lisbon objectives of the European Union. The experience of transitional countries in Europe, each different but facing some common problems, may be useful to developing countries in Africa.

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Inverse multi-objective robust evolutionary design

In this paper, we present an Inverse Multi-Objective Robust Evolutionary (IMORE) design methodology that handles the presence of uncertainty without making assumptions about the uncertainty structure. We model the clustering of uncertain events in families of nested sets using a multi-level optimization search. To reduce the high computational costs of the proposed methodology we proposed schemes for (1) adapting the step-size in estimating the uncertainty, and (2) trimming down the number of calls to the objective function in the nested search. Both offline and online adaptation strategies are considered in conjunction with the IMORE design algorithm. Design of Experiments (DOE) approaches further reduce the number of objective function calls in the online adaptive IMORE algorithm. Empirical studies conducted on a series of test functions having diverse complexities show that the proposed algorithms converge to a set of Pareto-optimal design solutions with non-dominated nominal and robustness performances efficiently.

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Workplace innovation: bridging knowledge and practice

The article draws on a decade of work in the UK by the UK Work Organisation Network (UKWON), and recommends a systematic approach. Taking cases in the National Health Service, the focus is on employee involvement, partnership and the development of social capital. High and low road approaches are compared, in an evaluation of the Improving Working Lives programme.

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Understanding and capturing people’s privacy policies in a mobile social networking application

A number of mobile applications have emerged that allow users to locate one another. However, people have expressed concerns about the privacy implications associated with this class of software, suggesting that broad adoption may only happen to the extent that these concerns are adequately addressed. In this article, we report on our work on PeopleFinder, an application that enables cell phone and laptop users to selectively share their locations with others (e.g. friends, family, and colleagues). The objective of our work has been to better understand people’s attitudes and behaviors towards privacy as they interact with such an application, and to explore technologies that empower users to more effectively and efficiently specify their privacy preferences (or “policies”). These technologies include user interfaces for specifying rules and auditing disclosures, as well as machine learning techniques to refine user policies based on their feedback. We present evaluations of these technologies in the context of one laboratory study and three field studies.

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LuxTrace: indoor positioning using building illumination

Tracking location is challenging due to the numerous constraints of practical systems including, but not limited to global cost, device volume and weight, scalability and accuracy; these constraints are typically more severe for systems that should be wearable and used indoors. We investigate the use of wearable solar cells to track changing light conditions (a concept that we named LuxTrace) as a source of user displacement and activity data. We evaluate constraints of this approach and present results from an experimental validation of displacement and activity estimation. The results indicate that a distance estimation accuracy of 21 cm (80% quantile) can be achieved. A simple method to combine LuxTrace with complementary absolute location estimation methods is also presented. We apply carpet-like distributed RFID tags to demonstrate online learning of new lighting environments.

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Cross-cultural interface design strategy

This paper addresses the emerging need for an integration of the cultural and social factors of metaphors into interface design, by creating cultural models within the context of indigenous users. Current theoretical and empirical work is reviewed that uses existing cultural models. Finally, an investigative strategic model is proposed for research in this field that incorporates all the important components of cultural contexts of metaphors in interface design.

Using trust assumptions with security requirements

Assumptions are frequently made during requirements analysis of a system about the trustworthiness of its various components (including human components). These trust assumptions, whether implicit or explicit, affect the scope of the analysis, derivation of security requirements, and in some cases how functionality is realized. This paper presents trust assumptions in the context of analysis of security requirements. A running example shows how trust assumptions can be used by a requirements engineer to help define and limit the scope of analysis and to document the decisions made during the process. The paper concludes with a case study examining the impact of trust assumptions on software that uses the secure electronic transaction specification.

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COMUNICAR: designing a multimedia, context-aware human-machine interface for cars

The European Union co-funded COMUNICAR (communication multimedia unit inside car) project designed and developed an integrated multimedia human–machine interface (HMI) able to manage a wide variety of driver information systems (from entertainment to safety). COMUNICAR proposed an innovative information provision paradigm, in which the on-vehicle HMI is able to tailor the delivery of the information in real time according to the actual driving context and the drivers workload. COMUNICAR adopted a user-centred design process involving an iterative development based on extensive user tests since the early phases of the project. This approach was particularly useful to define and improve the layout of the user interface and specify the rules that decide the scheduling and the modalities of the delivery of the information messages to the driver. This paper introduces the COMUNICAR concept and the user-centred flow of design. Then, a concrete case of user-test driven, iterative improvement of a systems functionality is presented. We also briefly describe two software tools that we have designed to enhance the development process in a user-centred perspective. Finally, the future evolution of the concept of smart and safe information scheduling is sketched and discussed.

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Interacting with mobile services: an evaluation of camera-phones and visual tags

We present a study of using camera-phones and visual-tags to access mobile services. Firstly, a user-experience study is described in which participants were both observed learning to interact with a prototype mobile service and interviewed about their experiences. Secondly, a pointing-device task is presented in which quantitative data was gathered regarding the speed and accuracy with which participants aimed and clicked on visual-tags using camera-phones. We found that participants’ attitudes to visual-tag-based applications were broadly positive, although they had several important reservations about camera-phone technology more generally. Data from our pointing-device task demonstrated that novice users were able to aim and click on visual-tags quickly (well under 3 s per pointing-device trial on average) and accurately (almost all meeting our defined speed/accuracy tradeoff of 6% error-rate). Based on our findings, design lessons for camera-phone and visual-tag applications are presented.

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Methods for quantitative usability requirements: a case study on the development of the user interface of a mobile phone

Quantitative usability requirements are a critical but challenging, and hence an often neglected aspect of a usability engineering process. A case study is described where quantitative usability requirements played a key role in the development of a new user interface of a mobile phone. Within the practical constraints of the project, existing methods for determining usability requirements and evaluating the extent to which these are met, could not be applied as such, therefore tailored methods had to be developed. These methods and their applications are discussed.

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Formal analysis of human operator behavioural patterns in interactive surveillance systems

An important area of Human Reliability Assessment in interactive systems is the ability to understand the causes of human error and to model their occurrence. This paper investigates a new approach to analysis of task failures based on patterns of operator behaviour, in contrast with more traditional event-based approaches. It considers, as a case study, a formal model of an Air Traffic Control system operator’s task which incorporates a simple model of the high-level cognitive processes involved. The cognitive model is formalised in the CSP process algebra. Various patterns of behaviour that could lead to task failure are described using temporal logic. Then a model-checking technique is used to verify whether the set of selected behavioural patterns is sound and complete with respect to the definition of task failure. The decomposition is shown to be incomplete and a new behavioural pattern is identified, which appears to have been overlooked in the informal analysis of the problem. This illustrates how formal analysis of operator models can yield fresh insights into how failures may arise in interactive systems.

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ONTRACK: Dynamically adapting music playback to support navigation

Listening to music on personal, digital devices whilst mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. We explore a scheme for exploiting this practice to immerse listeners in navigation cues. Our prototype, ONTRACK, continuously adapts audio, modifying the spatial balance and volume to lead listeners to their target destination. First we report on an initial lab-based evaluation that demonstrated the approach’s efficacy: users were able to complete tasks within a reasonable time and their subjective feedback was positive. Encouraged by these results we constructed a handheld prototype. Here, we discuss this implementation and the results of field-trials. These indicate that even with a low-fidelity realisation of the concept, users can quite effectively navigate complicated routes.

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Multimodal support to group dynamics

The complexity of group dynamics occurring in small group interactions often hinders the performance of teams. The availability of rich multimodal information about what is going on during the meeting makes it possible to explore the possibility of providing support to dysfunctional teams from facilitation to training sessions addressing both the individuals and the group as a whole. A necessary step in this direction is that of capturing and understanding group dynamics. In this paper, we discuss a particular scenario, in which meeting participants receive multimedia feedback on their relational behaviour, as a first step towards increasing self-awareness. We describe the background and the motivation for a coding scheme for annotating meeting recordings partially inspired by the Bales’ Interaction Process Analysis. This coding scheme was aimed at identifying suitable observable behavioural sequences. The study is complemented with an experimental investigation on the acceptability of such a service.

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A conceptual framework for component context specification and representation in a metaCASE environment

A lack of design information can be a significant barrier for systems developers when developing and reusing a component. This paper tackles this problem by presenting and exemplifying the conceptual framework of component context and its hypertext representation in a metaCASE environment. It discusses the linking of contextual knowledge to components in systems analysis and design. The contextual knowledge includes the conceptual dependencies of component definition, reuse, and implementation, as well as the reasoning and rationale behind design and reuse processes. We also illustrate the hypertext approach to contextual knowledge representation that enables designers to express, record, explore, recognize, and negotiate their shared context within a metaCASE environment.

Adaptation and application of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms for rule reduction and parameter tuning of fuzzy rule-based systems

Recently, multi-objective evolutionary algorithms have been applied to improve the difficult tradeoff between interpretability and accuracy of fuzzy rule-based systems. It is known that both requirements are usually contradictory, however, these kinds of algorithms can obtain a set of solutions with different trade-offs. This contribution analyzes different application alternatives in order to attain the desired accuracy/interpr-etability balance by maintaining the improved accuracy that a tuning of membership functions could give but trying to obtain more compact models. In this way, we propose the use of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms as a tool to get almost one improved solution with respect to a classic single objective approach (a solution that could dominate the one obtained by such algorithm in terms of the system error and number of rules). To do that, this work presents and analyzes the application of six different multi-objective evolutionary algorithms to obtain simpler and still accurate linguistic fuzzy models by performing rule selection and a tuning of the membership functions. The results on two different scenarios show that the use of expert knowledge in the algorithm design process significantly improves the search ability of these algorithms and that they are able to improve both objectives together, obtaining more accurate and at the same time simpler models with respect to the single objective based approach.

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Legal safeguards for privacy and data protection in ambient intelligence

To get the maximum benefit from ambient intelligence (AmI), we need to anticipate and react to possible drawbacks and threats emerging from the new technologies in order to devise appropriate safeguards. The SWAMI project took a precautionary approach in its exploration of the privacy risks in AmI and sought ways to reduce them. It constructed four “dark scenarios” showing possible negative implications of AmI, notably for privacy protection. Legal analysis of the depicted futures showed the shortcomings of the current legal framework in being able to provide adequate privacy protection in the AmI environment. In this paper, the authors, building upon their involvement in SWAMI research as well as the further advancement of EU privacy analysis, identify various outstanding issues regarding the legal framework that still need to be resolved in order to deal with AmI in an equitable and efficacious way. This article points out some of the lacunae in the legal framework and postulates several privacy-specific safeguards aimed at overcoming them.

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A survey of RFID privacy approaches

A bewildering number of proposals have offered solutions to the privacy problems inherent in RFID communication. This article tries to give an overview of the currently discussed approaches and their attributes.

Understanding spaces as places: extending interaction design paradigms

This short paper focuses on some issues involved in the design of ubiquitous technologies and their integration within physical spaces. Current design methodologies and techniques do not explicitly consider the importance of gaining a full understanding of the human experience of space when designing technologies that will pervade and become an integral part of our physical environment. This paper is specifically focused on the importance of considering spaces as places, and of analysing those features of a place that are going to shape users interactions with technologically enhanced environments. It also examines the future implications that this approach may have on theoretical and methodological aspects of interaction design.

Protecting business intelligence and customer privacy while outsourcing data mining tasks

Nowadays data mining plays an important role in decision making. Since many organizations do not possess the in-house expertise of data mining, it is beneficial to outsource data mining tasks to external service providers. However, most organizations hesitate to do so due to the concern of loss of business intelligence and customer privacy. In this paper, we present a Bloom filter based solution to enable organizations to outsource their tasks of mining association rules, at the same time, protect their business intelligence and customer privacy. Our approach can achieve high precision in data mining by trading-off the storage requirement. This research was supported by the USA National Science Foundation Grants CCR-0310974 and IIS-0546027.

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