Awareness marks: adaptive services through user interactions with augmented objects

The ambient intelligence paradigm involves one important challenge: to be adaptive to users and context through simple and natural interactions. To meet this goal, it is important to associate data with relevant everyday objects in the environment, including users themselves, and to enable interaction mechanisms between these objects. Following this premise, in this paper, we present a conceptual model to link contextual information with augmented elements acquired from user interactions in an implicit and transparent way. In this way, it is possible to personalize and enhance offered services in order to facilitate daily user activities. We call this contextual data “awareness marks”, and these awareness marks make it possible to offer novel services adapted from past events that were captured as they happened. Moreover, we have developed and evaluated a set of prototypes using Near Field Communication technology, which follows the presented model.     

A multi-user perspective for personalized email communities

Email classification and prioritization expert systems have the potential to automatically group emails and users as communities based on their communication patterns, which is one of the most tedious tasks. The exchange of emails among users along with the time and content information determine the pattern of communication. The intelligent systems extract these patterns from an email corpus of single or all users and are limited to statistical analysis. However, the email information revealed in those methods is either constricted or widespread, i.e. single or all users respectively, which limits the usability of the resultant communities. In contrast to extreme views of the email information, we relax the aforementioned restrictions by considering a subset of all users as multi-user information in an incremental way to extend the personalization concept. Accordingly, we propose a multi-user personalized email community detection method to discover the groupings of email users based on their structural and semantic intimacy. We construct a social graph using multi-user personalized emails. Subsequently, the social graph is uniquely leveraged with expedient attributes, such as semantics, to identify user communities through collaborative similarity measure. The multi-user personalized communities, which are evaluated through different quality measures, enable the email systems to filter spam or malicious emails and suggest contacts while composing emails. The experimental results over two randomly selected users from email network, as constrained information, unveil partial interaction among 80% email users with 14% search space reduction where we notice 25% improvement in the clustering coefficient.     

IMMIView: a multi-user solution for design review in real-time

IMMIView is an interactive system that relies on multiple modalities and multi-user interaction to support collaborative design review. It was designed to offer natural interaction in visualization setups such as large-scale displays, head mounted displays or TabletPC computers. To support architectural design, our system provides content creation and manipulation, 3D scene navigation and annotations. Users can interact with the system using laser pointers, speech commands, body gestures and mobile devices. In this paper, we describe how we design a system to answer architectural user requirements. In particular, our system takes advantage of multiple modalities to provide a natural interaction for design review. We also propose a new graphical user interface adapted to architectural user tasks, such as navigation or annotations. The interface relies on a novel stroke-based interaction supported by simple laser pointers as input devices for large-scale displays. Furthermore, input devices such as speech and body tracking allow IMMIView to support multiple users. Moreover, they allow each user to select different modalities according to their preference and modality adequacy for the user task. We present a multi-modal fusion system developed to support multi-modal commands on a collaborative, co-located, environment, i.e. with two or more users interacting at the same time, on the same system. The multi-modal fusion system listens to inputs from all the IMMIView modules in order to model user actions and issue commands. The multiple modalities are fused based on a simple rule-based sub-module developed in IMMIView and presented in this paper. User evaluation performed over IMMIView is presented. The results show that users feel comfortable with the system and suggest that users prefer the multi-modal approach to more conventional interactions, such as mouse and menus, for the architectural tasks presented.     

Usability study of ME2.0

Mobile context-aware applications execute in the background of hosts mobile devices. The applications source process and aggregate hosts’ contextual and personal information. This information is disclosed to ubiquitously pervasive services that adapt their offerings to individual preferences. Unfortunately, many developers continue to ignore the user perspective in context-aware application designs as they complicate their overall task and generate exponential requirements. The additional incorporation of privacy mechanisms in context-aware applications to safeguard context and personal information disclosures also complicates users’ tasks resulting to misconfigured or completely abandoned applications. Misconfigured applications give end-users a false assurance of privacy exposing them to comprising services. We present a usability study on Mobile Electronic Personality Version 2 a privacy enhanced context-aware mobile application for personalising ubiquitous services and adapting pervasive smart-spaces. We draw conclusions on key issues related to user needs, based on user interviews, surveys, prototypes and field evaluations. Users’ needs are evaluated against five themes, learn-ability, efficiency, memorability, errors, satisfaction and privacy contention. In addition, design layout preferences, privacy manageability and consensus design comprehension are also evaluated. Clarity of priorities in context-aware mobile applications shaped by usability studies effectively increases the acceptance of levels of potential users.     

Prototyping strategies for multisensory product experience engineering

The paper deals with prototyping strategies aimed at supporting engineers in the design of the multisensory experience of products. It is widely recognised that the most effective strategy to design it is to create working prototypes and analyse user’s reactions when interacting with them. Starting from this consciousness, we will discuss of how virtual reality (VR) technologies can support engineers to build prototypes suitable to this aim. Furthermore we will demonstrate how VR-based prototypes do not only represent a valid alternative to physical prototypes, but also a step forward thanks to the possibility of simulating and rendering multisensory and real-time modifiable interactions between the user and the prototype. These characteristics of VR-based prototypes enable engineers to rapidly test with users different variants and to optimise the multisensory experience perceived by them during the interaction. The discussion is supported both by examples available in literature and by case studies we have developed over the years on this topic. Specifically, in our research we have concentrated on what happens in the physical contact between the user and the product. Such contact strongly influences the user’s impression about the product.     

多用户数字波束形成中的目标辨识方法

传统波束形成中,虽然可以通过波达方向(DOA)估计得到期望信号和干扰信号的空间信息,但并不能对二者进行区分。根据移动通信CDMA系统中多用户检测的原理,在用户发送端给不同期望用户分配不同的伪随机码作为标识码,接收端通过相关检测可以很好地区分不同期望信号和干扰信号。仿真结果表明了该方法能保持辨识系统低的虚警概率和漏警概率,准确辨识出特定期望用户的方向。     

Pedestrian navigation using the sense of touch

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled user device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human–computer interaction has been visual, data, or images on a screen. Haptic feedback can be an important modality in Mobile Location-Based Services like – knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. In this paper we describe a methodology for the implementation of haptics in four distinct prototypes for pedestrian navigation. Prototypes are classified based on the user’s navigation guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Here haptics is used to convey location, orientation, and distance information to users using pedestrian navigation applications. Initial user trials have elicited positive responses from the users who see benefit in being provided with a “heads up” approach to mobile navigation. We also tested the spatial ability of the user to navigate using haptics and landmark images based navigation. This was followed by a test of memory recall about the area. Users were able to successfully navigate from a given origin to a Destination Point without the use of a visual interface like a map. Results show the users of haptic feedback for navigation prepared better maps (better memory recall) of the region as compared to the users of landmark images based navigation.     

基于稳定匹配的多用户任务卸载策略

随着许多计算密集型应用的出现,移动设备因其有限的计算能力无法满足用户时延、能耗等需求。移动边缘计算（MEC）通过无线信道将用户的任务计算卸载到MEC服务器,从而显著减少任务响应时延和能耗。针对多用户任务卸载问题,提出了基于稳定匹配的多用户任务卸载策略（MUTOSA）,在保证用户的时延要求下达到能耗最小化。首先,在综合考虑时延与能耗的基础上,对独立任务场景下的多用户任务卸载问题进行建模;然后,基于博弈论的稳定匹配中的延迟接收思想,提出了一种调整策略;最后,通过不断迭代,解决了多用户任务卸载问题。实验结果表明,该策略相较于基准策略和启发式策略能够满足更多用户的时延要求,平均提高约10%的用户满意度,并能减少约50%的用户设备总能耗。所提策略在保证用户时延要求的同时有效地减少了能耗,可以有效地提高用户对于时延敏感型应用的体验。     

Discovering Typed Communities in Mobile Social Networks

Mobile social networks,which consist of mobile users who communicate with each other using cell phones,are reflections of people’s interactions in social lives.Discovering typed communities(e.g.,family communities or corporate communities) in mobile social networks is a very promising problem.For example,it can help mobile operators to determine the target users for precision marketing.In this paper we propose discovering typed communities in mobile social networks by utilizing the labels of relationships between users.We use the user logs stored by mobile operators,including communication and user movement records,to collectively label all the relationships in a network,by employing an undirected probabilistic graphical model,i.e.,conditional random fields.Then we use two methods to discover typed communities based on the results of relationship labeling:one is simply retaining or cutting relationships according to their labels,and the other is using sophisticated weighted community detection algorithms.The experimental results show that our proposed framework performs well in terms of the accuracy of typed community detection in mobile social networks.     

Partial user-supplied information and user modeling for improving QoS

The incorporation of user-supplied information has become mandatory for the improvement of QoS in network systems. There is the question about accommodation of new users of a service, given that information about former users of a service is available. In the present work, we followed two approaches to derive information about new users in the network design and control processes, where both are based on prototype generation for the answers of former users to a QoS related questionnaire. In the first approach, attempts were made to map user attributes to prototypes. The second approach used a mapping from partial answers to a prototype. As a result, the first approach appeared to be infeasible, while the second showed good results. In the resulting trade-off between number of prototypes and classification accuracy, it is possible, for example, with 8 prototypes for around 1000 users to predict the answers of new users by using only 30% of the answers of former users, while reducing accuracy by only 13% at the same time.     

移动群智感知网络中信息量最大化的用户选择方法研究

移动群智感知网络已经成为一种新型的感知模式,被广泛应用在环境数据收集等多种不同场景.限制群智感知系统效能的一个关键问题在于:如何在一定预算范围内选取最合适的用户来进行感知任务,从而最大化收集到数据的信息量.这其中的关键挑战包括:(1)如何定义量化评价指标衡量数据的信息量,(2)如何在无先验知识的情况下有效地学习选择每个用户的成本,(3)如何设计有效的用户选择算法,最大程度地降低算法的累计遗憾.在本文中,我们采用高斯过程建模空间环境,并且提出一个基于互信息的信息量衡量指标.为了解决第二、第三个挑战,我们提出有预算限制的多臂老虎机用户选择问题模型,并为静态和动态场景分别设计了理论可证的低累计遗憾的多轮用户选择算法.我们的理论分析和仿真实验均证实我们提出的算法能够在预算限制情况下有效地选择最有信息量的用户,与基准方法相比提升约20%.     

基于ASP技术在线考试系统的设计

应用ASP技术和Access数据库系统组建设计的在线考试系统。具有用户注册、多用户同时在线考试。动态髓机出题等主要功能。     

笔式用户界面开发工具研究

笔式用户界面提供给用户更为自然的交互方式,然而,笔式用户界面的构造是一项非常困难的工作,一个可用的笔式用户界面系统往往需要多领域、多学科的知识.系统地论述了一个支持笔式用户界面开发的工具系统Penbuilder的设计实现.它基于笔交互的特性以及无处不在的计算环境的要求而设计,为笔式用户界面的开发提供高级的支持.基于Penbuilder的支持,设计开发了一批典型的笔式用户界面原型系统.该研究为笔式用户界面的构造与快速原型提供了有力的支持.     

Enhanced dynamic credential generation scheme for protection of user identity in mobile-cloud computing

To improve the resource limitation of mobile devices, mobile users may utilize cloud-computational and storage services. Although the utilization of the cloud services improves the processing and storage capacity of mobile devices, the migration of confidential information on untrusted cloud raises security and privacy issues. Considering the security of mobile-cloud-computing subscribers’ information, a mechanism to authenticate legitimate mobile users in the cloud environment is sought. Usually, the mobile users are authenticated in the cloud environment through digital credential methods, such as password. Once the users’ credential information theft occurs, the adversary can use the hacked information for impersonating the mobile user later on. The alarming situation is that the mobile user is unaware about adversary’s malicious activities. In this paper, a light-weight security scheme is proposed for mobile user in cloud environment to protect the mobile user’s identity with dynamic credentials. The proposed scheme offloads the frequently occurring dynamic credential generation operations on a trusted entity to keep minimum processing burden on the mobile device. To enhance the security and reliability of the scheme, the credential information is updated frequently on the basis of mobile-cloud packets exchange. Furthermore, the proposed scheme is compared with the existing scheme on the basis of performance metrics i.e. turnaround time and energy consumption. The experimental results for the proposed scheme showed significant improvement in turnaround time and energy consumption as compared to the existing scheme.     

Prototypes and paratypes: designing mobile and ubiquitous computing applications

Conducting user-centered design is a primary challenge in ubiquitous computing. Two kinds of prototyping techniques can be particularly effective for developing mobile and ubiquitous computing applications: compound prototypes and situated experience prototypes. Compound prototypes combine the final product's user interface (UI) with a computational implementation that runs on a separate system without the resource constraints of the target device. This model lets researchers and designers evaluate a new application's physicality and aesthetics as well as its functionality. Situated experience prototypes, or paratypes, include experimental protocols that attempt to reproduce user interaction with the system in real situations, and can optionally use common prototyping instruments such as paper mock-ups or physical props. Using our Personal Audio Loop (PAL) project as a case study, we discuss how you can fruitfully employ compound prototypes and paratypes when designing and developing mobile and ubiquitous computing applications.     

Characteristics and usage patterns of older people in a 3D online multi-user virtual environment

3D online multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) have a lot of potential in supporting older people in their daily lives, yet little research has been conducted to explore how older people engage with this type of technology. This paper aims to investigate the characteristics, user groups and activity patterns (particularly social networks and gift giving behaviour) of older users within a 3D online multi-user virtual environment. Data from approximately 5000 online user profiles of older and younger users from a 3D MUVE, namely IMVU, was collected for analysis. Overall, we identified several distinct patterns of use (e.g. size of social ties, level of reciprocity, etc.) among older users when compared with younger users. We also found that despite the capabilities of 3D MUVEs to provide the users immersion in alternative realities, a feature well embraced by younger users in this study, older users seemed more interested in activities which serve as an extension to their physical life.     

Human–battery interaction on mobile phones

Mobile phone users have to deal with limited battery lifetime through a reciprocal process we call human–battery interaction. We conducted three user studies in order to understand human–battery interaction and discover the problems in existing designs that prevent users from effectively dealing with the limited battery lifetime. The studies include a large-scale international survey, two long-term field trials including quantitative battery logging and qualitative inquiries, and structured interviews with twenty additional mobile phone users. We evaluated various aspects of human–battery interaction, including charging behavior, battery indicators, user interfaces for power-saving settings, user knowledge, and user reaction. We find that mobile phone users can be categorized into two types regarding human–battery interaction and often have inadequate knowledge regarding phone power characteristics. We provide qualitative and quantitative evidence that problems in state-of-the-art user interfaces have led to under-utilized power-saving settings, under-utilized battery energy, and dissatisfied users. Our findings provide insights into improving mobile phone design for users to effectively deal with the limited battery lifetime. Our work is the first to systematically address human–battery interaction on mobile phones and is complementary to the extensive research on energy-efficient design for a longer battery lifetime.     

Supporting casual interactions between board games on public tabletop displays and mobile devices

As more interactive surfaces enter public life, casual interactions from passersby are bound to increase. Most of these users can be expected to carry a mobile phone or PDA, which nowadays offers significant computing capabilities of its own. This offers new possibilities for interaction between these users’ private displays and large public ones. In this paper, we present a system that supports such casual interactions. We first explore a method to track mobile phones that are placed on a horizontal interactive surface by examining the shadows which are cast on the surface. This approach detects the presence of a mobile device, as opposed to any other opaque object, through the signal strength emitted by the built-in Bluetooth transceiver without requiring any modifications to the devices’ software or hardware. We then go on to investigate interaction between a Sudoku game running in parallel on the public display and on mobile devices carried by passing users. Mobile users can join a running game by placing their devices on a designated area. The only requirement is that the device is in discoverable Bluetooth mode. After a specific device has been recognized, a client software is sent to the device which then enables the user to interact with the running game. Finally, we explore the results of a study which we conducted to determine the effectiveness and intrusiveness of interactions between users on the tabletop and users with mobile devices.     

Evaluating the impact of proactivity in the user experience of a context-aware restaurant recommender for Android smartphones

Proactivity has recently gained much attention in the area of cyber physical systems as sensing the users’ real world environment is needed to achieve it. Proactive recommenders are a good example because they push recommendations to the user when the current situation seems appropriate, without explicit user request. Evaluating whether users would accept proactive recommendations, how to properly notify them and how to present recommended items are important research questions. In this article, we present the scenario related to a context-aware restaurant recommender for Android smartphones. Two options to achieve proactivity have been designed: a widget- and a notification-based solution. In addition, our mobile user interface includes a visualization of recommended items and allows for user feedback. The approach was evaluated in a survey among users with good results regarding usefulness and effectiveness. The results also showed that test users preferred the widget-based solution in terms of user experience.     

基于用户轨迹及基站语义的城市活动模式可视分析

移动运营商搭建的基站能够记录智能终端的活动,蕴涵着用户的移动行为以及基站的语义信息.针对城市中基站语义以及活动模式难以获取的问题,提出一种基于用户轨迹的基站语义及城市活动模式可视分析方法.该方法首先根据终端用户的轨迹构建基站序列,接着采用文本分析中的词嵌入技术对基站语义信息进行提取,对城市中的手机用户进行聚类以发现其移动模式.为了帮助用户对结果进行探索和分析,设计了基于用户轨迹以及基站语义的城市活动模式可视分析系统,能够根据用户的轨迹特征、基站的地域特征、用户访问基站的时空特征,对手机用户的行为以及城市的活动模式进行发现和解释.基于真实数据的实验结果表明,在系统用户的迭代交互中该方法能够帮助系统用户有效地结合基站轨迹及其基站语义信息,对城市居民行为模式以及城市整体的活动模式进行探索.