New interfaces: making computers more accessible

Industry observers say many people don't buy computers because they find them too difficult to use for many purposes. In response, researchers are trying to develop more natural and intuitive types of interfaces. They are also developing intelligent agents to help users access information better and new kinds of software interfaces     

From interfaces to infrastructure: extending ecological interface design to re-design rail level crossings

Cognition, Technology & Work - Collisions between trains and road vehicles at rail level crossings remain an intractable transport safety issue. This paper describes the application of...     

From user interface design to the support of intelligent and adaptive interfaces: an overhaul of user interface software infrastracture

Research on adaptive interfaces in the past has lacked support from user interface tools which allow interfaces to be easily created and modified. Also, current user interface tools provide no support for user models which can collect task-oriented information about users. Developing an adaptive interface requires a user model and an adaptation strategy. It also, however, requires a user interface which can be adapted. The latter task is often time-consuming, especially in relation to more sophisticated user interfaces.

The paper presents a user interface design environment, UIDE, which has a different software infrastracture. Designers use high-level specifications to create a model of an application and links from the application to various interface components. The model is the heart of all the design and run-time support in UIDE, including automatic dialog sequencing and help generation. UIDE provides automatic support for collecting task-oriented information about users, by the use of its high-level specifications in its application model as a basic construct for a user model. Some examples of adaptive interfaces and adaptive help are presented that use the information that is collectable in UIDE.     

Toward the design of transitional interfaces: an exploratory study on a semi-immersive hybrid user interface

A task that can be decomposed into subtasks with different technological demands may be a challenge, since it requires multiple interactive environments as well as transitions between them. Some of these transitions may involve changes in hardware devices and interface paradigms at the same time. Some previous works have proposed various setups for hybrid user interfaces, but none of them focused on the design of transition interactions. Our work emphasizes the importance of interaction continuity as a guideline in the design and evaluation of transitional interfaces within a hybrid user interface (HUI). Finally, an exploratory study demonstrates how this design aspect is perceived by users during transitions in an HUI composed by three interactive environments.     

Interface compilation: steps toward compiling program interfaces aslanguages

Interfaces-the collection of procedures and data structures that define a library, a subsystem, a module-are syntactically poor programming languages. They have state (defined both by the interface's data structures and internally), operations on this state (defined by the interface's procedures), and semantics associated with these operations. Given a way to incorporate interface semantics into compilation, interfaces can be compiled in the same manner as traditional languages such as ANSI C or FORTRAN. The article makes two contributions. First, it proposes and explores the metaphor of interface compilation, and provides the beginnings of a programming methodology for exploiting it. Second, it presents MAGIK, a system built to support interface compilation. Using MAGIK, software developers can build optimizers and checkers for their interface languages, and have these extensions incorporated into compilation, with a corresponding gain in efficiency and safety. This organization contrasts with traditional compilation, which relegates programmers to the role of passive consumers, rather than active exploiters of a compiler's transformational abilities     

Designing software interfaces to suit everyone: How interface design can relate to the new and experienced user

A design technique is available for developing software systems which meet the needs of the inexperienced and the experienced users. It is only when a system can successfully cope with both groups of users that it can be described as truly userfriendly.     

Human-centered intelligent vehicles: toward multimodal interface integration

Many prototypes of intelligent vehicles integrating extremely advanced information and control subsystems have been built and proposed, each with its own interface. The paper presents an overview of the concepts and principles of, and approaches to, the design of interfaces for equipment in future intelligent vehicles.     

Organizing human factors knowledge for the evaluation and design of interfaces

This paper presents research conducted in the area of human factors knowledge collection and organization. Providing that a large amountof human factors engineering data is available now concerning user interface aspects, this research started from the following question: Can this knowledge be transferred to user interface designers, and by which means can this be done? An important part of human factors knowledge is included in recommendations and guidelines. It is the problems with that type of knowledge that this paper focuses on. A first attempt to tackle some of these problems is made by offering a generic model for deciphering recommendations into rules. This model stresses the importance of attributes such as human factors criteria, classes of premises, and conclusions, as well as interface objects. Definitions of criteria for organizing recommendations are offered, and a few examples of rule‐based reasoning are provided. The remaining problems with a rule approach are then discussed according to two dimensions: intrinsic problems and usage problems. In addition, it appears that an approach based on literature recommendations is not sufficient. Other areas that need further work are described, particularly concerning task and interface modelling, and human factors expertise modelling. The paper concludes on the limits and benefits of such an approach.     

Benefits of nanotechnology for occupational ergonomic design: A positive step toward more protection of workers' health

Nowadays, the combination of “Nanotechnology” and “Ergonomics” has been known as “Nano-ergonomics.” Nano-ergonomics can help to develop more comfortable conditions in workplaces. So, the aim of this study is to reveal benefits of nanotechnology for occupational health and safety design, especially ergonomic design. The search strategy was provided based on cochrane guidelines with main search terms of “Nanotechnology,” “Nanomaterial,” and “Nanoparticle” combined with “Ergonomics” and “Human Factors.” PubMed, Scopus, Web of Sciences and Google Scholar Databases were researched for relevant articles. Also, Google search engine was used to find nano-ergonomic commercial products and to complete the research with identifying additional information. A total of 32 articles were first achieved. By providing Synthesis Without Meta-analysis reporting guideline, finally, four studies were regarded as appropriate. The results showed that nanotechnology has developed in three major areas of ergonomics such as physical, environmental, and cognitive ergonomics, which is a positive step toward more protection of workers' health. Although, there are not any original article related to nanotechnology for ergonomic product design, they are offered as the commercial products by the largest companies such as Amazon. Also, workers at the nanotechnology-related industries have the challenges of exposure to toxic nanomaterials. So, before the application of nanomaterials, we should have proper knowledge of nanomaterials-caused toxic hazards and how to handle them.     

Pragmatic modeling: toward a robust natural language interface

One of the most important ways in which an information-provider can assimilate an information-seeking dialogue is by inferring the underlying task-related plan motivating the information-seeker's queries. This paper presents a strategy for hypothesizing and tracking the changing task-level goals of an information-seeker and building a model of his task-related plan as the dialogue progresses.
Naturally occurring utterances are often imperfect. The information-provider often appears to use acquired knowledge about the information-seeker's underlying task-related plan to remedy many of the information-seeker's faulty utterances and enable the dialogue to continue without interruption. This paper presents a strategy for understanding one kind of defective utterance. Our approach relies on the information-seeker's inferred task-related plan as the primary mechanism for suggesting how an utterance should be understood, thereby considering only interpretations that are relevant to what the information-seeker is trying to accomplish. If multiple interpretations are suggested, relevance to the current focus of attention in the dialogue and similarity to the information-seeker's actual utterance are used to select the interpretation that is most likely to represent his intended meaning or satisfy his needs.     

Every little bit counts: toward more reliable software

By and large, software works much of the time, more or less. If society hadn't come to rely so fundamentally on our profession, Y2K, for one, wouldn't be such a big deal. But the overall service that we render is not good enough by any measure. One of the most critical components of software quality is reliability. Efforts to improve reliability are not new. In fact, there are many different approaches, some of which are outlined by the author     

Stereoscopic human interfaces

This article focuses on the use of stereoscopic video interfaces for telerobotics. Topics concerning human visual perception, binocular image capturing, and stereoscopic devices are described. There is a wide variety of video interfaces for telerobotic systems [1]. Choosing the best video interface depends on the telerobotic application requirements. Simple monoscopic cameras are good enough for watching remote robot movements or for teleprogramming a sequence of commands. However, when operators seek precise robot guidance or wish to manipulate objects, a better perception of the remote environment must be achieved, for which more advanced visual interfaces are required. This implies a higher degree of telepresence, and, therefore, the most suitable visual interface has to be chosen. The aim of this article is to describe the two main aspects using stereoscopic interfaces: · the capture of binocular video images, according to the disparity limits in human perception · the proper selection of the visualization interface for stereoscopic images.     

Toward the gestural interface: comparative analysis between touch user interfaces versus gesture-based user interfaces on mobile devices

Universal Access in the Information Society - Human–computer interaction is transformed as well as the technology used to achieve it. This paper discusses the ease of use of a classic touch...     

The art of ALT: toward a more accessible Web

Continuing innovations in pedagogical uses of the Web are consistent with our discipline’s long-standing commitment to the expansion of literacy. Surging interest in multimedia and visual rhetoric emphasizes the importance of the 1999 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as a tool for instructors seeking to make their Web documents accessible to learners and colleagues who have disabilities. Text-only variants of media-rich sites are not sufficient; on the Web, as on our campuses, separate is not and cannot be equal. Changes in the way we approach designing class Web sites may be necessary to enable all learners to participate equally in the learning community. Accessibility is not a property of the document: It is situated in specific contexts and distributed across multiple agents and artifacts. A Web experience designed to be rich and meaningful for people with disabilities is likely to be rich and meaningful for those without disabilities as well; however, the reverse is not necessarily true.     

Looking at human–computer interface design: Effects of ethnicity in computer agents

This paper presents empirical research findings that identify demonstrated attitude changes in computer users associated with their receiving advice from personified computer agents of two different ethnicities: African American and European American. Our findings indicate that computer users are more likely to change their actions (demonstrating underlying attitudes) based on input from a computer agent whose ethnicity is similar to theirs. These findings directly impact computer agent design in many fields.     

Computer interface design: A user-centered approach

Enhancing the way people use computers to perform tasks has become a very important issue in interface design and human-computer interactions. When the concept of human-computer interaction first began to emerge it was commonly understood as the hardware and software through which a human and computer could effectively communicate (Laurel, 1990). This effective communication is also know as user-friendliness. The concept of user friendliness has recently been expanded to include various attributes and cognitive aspects of the user's needs and experiences. Focus should be on the user's experiences, expectations, preferences, and cognitive aspects in developing efficient and effective computer interface designs. It is the basic premise of this paper to emphasize using a user-centered design in developing computer interfaces.     

Ecological interface design: progress and challenges

Ecological interface design (EID) is a theoretical framework for designing human-computer interfaces for complex sociotechnical systems. Its primary aim is to support knowledge workers in adapting to change and novelty. This literature review shows that in situations requiring problem solving, EID improves performance when compared with current design approaches in industry. EID has been applied to industry-scale problems in a broad variety of application domains (e.g., process control, aviation, computer network management, software engineering, medicine, command and control, and information retrieval) and has consistently led to the identification of new information requirements. An experimental evaluation of EID using a full-fidelity simulator with professional workers has yet to be conducted, although some are planned. Several significant challenges remain as obstacles to the confident use of EID in industry. Promising paths for addressing these outstanding issues are identified. Actual or potential applications of this research include improving the safety and productivity of complex sociotechnical systems.     

Web site design: less is more

Join the fight against bloated, over-designed Web sites that obscure important information and slow the Web to a crawl. When the Web first appeared, the “blink” tag was popular; however it became too popular and was overused. As things progressed, we began to add graphics and embedded fonts, streamed media, and Shockwave games. Sadly, we often forgot to throw common sense and good design into the mix. Don't get me wrong. The world is a richer place thanks to the free flow of information and education the Web brings. It can bring down tyrants and raise grassroots armies; it can reunite lost siblings and bring together providers and the needy. But it can also cause eyestrain, headaches, and confusion. Welcome to the world of poor Web site design. Even today, some of the most popular sites still don't seem to get it. The “biggest and best” prove that neither adjective necessarily applies to the word “design”. The article examines scrolling rules, pop-up menus, site navigation and graphics     

面向工业人机界面的信息安全策略设计及实现

针对工业人机界面资源有限、实时性要求高等特点,分别从入侵过滤、入侵检测、入侵处理3个部分设计了工业人机界面的信息安全策略.其中入侵过滤采用“白名单”机制,入侵检测采用基于模型的异常检测机制,模型包括任务模型、CPU利用率模型以及网络流量模型.该策略在基于LPC3250-Linux的嵌入式平台上进行了实现和相关实验,实验结果表明,该策略能有效地检测出测试数据集中的入侵行为并保持较低误报率,同时满足系统实时性要求.