Towards a cultural user interface generation principles

As ubiquitous computing, and pervasive computing technology are being applied rapidly to the service industry, in the field of HCI, more complex and in-depth research are required at the moment. The efforts to make user experience more valuable using useful multimedia technologies around us, are being made in various parts of the world. In addition to this, generation studies for developing easier and faster UI are being conducted in the field of UI. Until now, the studies have been focused on generation studies using UI pattern models, but smart UI generation development, considering the cultural environment of users, is required. The purpose of this study is to suggest 3-D integrated design principles of modeling, design, and system for the design of cultural user interface generation reflecting the users’ potential culture models. For this, a CTT model was designed based on MB-UID; and a cultural UI generation system architecture was designed by using cultural dimension models and cultural markers. To analyze the cultural factors, CISC (Cultural Index Score for Country) was derived in the process of culture profiling. Then, to verify the design model, culture UI was implemented, targeting the category UI of smartphone app stores.     

Towards standardisation of user models for simulation and adaptation purposes

The use of user models can be very valuable when trying to develop accessible and ergonomic products and services taking into account users’ specific needs and preferences. Simulation of user–product interaction using user models may reveal accessibility issues at the early stages of design and development, and this results to a significant reduction in costs and development time. Moreover, user models can be used in adaptive interfaces enabling the personalised customisation of user interfaces that enhances the accessibility and usability of products and services. This paper presents the efforts of the Virtual User Modelling and Simulation Standardisation ‘VUMS’ cluster of projects towards the development of an interoperable user model, able to describe both able-bodied and people with various kinds of disabilities. The VUMS cluster is consisted by the VERITAS, MyUI, GUIDE, and VICON FP7 European projects, all involved in user modelling from different perspectives. The main goal of the VUMS cluster was the development of a unified user model that could be used by all the participant projects and that could be the basis of a new user model standard. Currently, within the VUMS cluster, a common user model has been defined and converters that enable the transformation from each project’s specific user model to the VUMS user model and vice versa have been developed enabling, thus, the exchange of user models between the projects.     

Model-based intelligent user interface adaptation: challenges and future directions

Software and Systems Modeling - Adapting the user interface of a software system to the requirements of the context of use continues to be a major challenge, particularly when users become more...     

Towards mobile language evolution exploitation

Knowing about the evolution of a term can significantly help when searching for relevant information, especially in case of sudden evolutions (e.g. as of dramatical changes in political situations). Here, some terms get a completely new meaning or are used in new or different ways. In mobile situations it is important to be able to effectively retrieve information, since this is usually done in a hurry and interaction possibilities with mobile devices are limited. In this paper we describe a methodology using word sense discrimination to discover term evolution. We present two mobile interfaces for easy access and exploration of this evolution, as well as a user-study to show its usefulness. We conclude the paper with an outlook of further research possibilities in this new topic.     

Fooling the user of a programming language

Fooling the user' of a programming language by ‘natural’ constructions can cause completely unpredictable reliability defects in software systems. Numerous examples show the extent of the problem. Two methods of overcoming it are presented: simple languages devoid of user-fooling powers, and explication languages to accompany the more powerful languages.     

Automating visual language generation

A system to generate and interpret customized visual languages in given application areas is presented. The generation is highly automated. The user presents a set of sample visual sentences to the generator. The generator uses inference grammar techniques to produce a grammar that generalizes the initial set of sample sentences, and exploits general semantic information about the application area to determine the meaning of the visual sentences in the inferred language. The interpreter is modeled on an attribute grammar. A knowledge base, constructed during the generation of the system, is then consulted to construct the meaning of the visual sentence. The architecture of the system and its use in the application environment of visual text editing (inspired by the Heidelberg icon set) enhanced with file management features are reported     

Shaping user input: a strategy for natural language dialogue design

Traditional approaches to natural language dialogue interface design have adopted ordinary human-human conversation as the model for online human-computer interaction. The attempt to deal with all the subtleties of natural dialogues, such as topic focus, coherence, ellipsis, pronominal reference, etc. has resulted in prototype systems that are enormously complex and computationally expensive.

In a series of experiments^†, we explored ways of minimizing the processing burden of a dialogue system by channeling user input towards a more tractable, though still natural, form of Englishlanguage questions. Through linking a pair of terminals, we presented subjects with two different dialogue styles as a framework for online help in the domain of word-processing. The first dialogue style involved ordinary conversational format. The second style involved a simulation of an automated dialogue system, including apparent processing restrictions and ‘system process messages’ to inform the subject of the steps taken by the system during query analysis. In both cases human tutors played the role of the help system. After each dialogue session, subjects were interviewed to determine their assessments of the naturalness and usability of the dialogue interface.

We found that user input became more tractable to parsing and query analysis as the dialogue style became more formalized, yet the subjective assessment of naturalness and usability remained fairly constant. This suggests that techniques for channeling user input in a dialogue system may be effectively employed to reduce processing demands without compromising the benefits of a natural language interface. Theoretically, this data lends support to the hypothesis that unrestricted human-human conversation is not the most appropriate model for the design of human-computer dialogue interfaces.     

Towards a language for concurrent processes

In this paper we shall discuss concurrency in programming languages, with a view towards designing a process-oriented language which, by its inherent parallelism, is well suited to exploit the forthcoming generation of distributed processor networks. We shall start by discussing the traditional approach towards managing concurrency, with ‘monitors’ co-ordinating the interactions of ‘processes’, and shall demonstrate that this approach actually degrades concurrency by imposing sequentiality during interactions because it is based on the premise of co-ordinating secure access to shared resources. As a tool for interprocess communication it is felt that the ‘monitor’ is too far removed from the abstract nature of the problem, and so, as a purely engineering solution, it imposes too broad and too prolonged an exclusion to be acceptable in general. Instead we turn to a simpler, and ultimately more powerful notion of ‘message passing’ between parallel processes. We shall show how, if the message system is polymorphic, any data value, however large it is, can pass freely between any pair of processes. By making the processes themselves values in the language we shall discover that message networks can come into being dynamically, and tailor themselves to their applications as and when necessary by ‘short-circuiting’ extensive communications paths. We shall also see how, if the message system is inherently asynchronous, the degree of the parallelism in a system can be enhanced, not degraded, as more and elaborate communications paths develop, the only sequentiality in the system as a whole being imposed by synchronizing processes, not the message passing system itself. After discussing the various built-in system facilities that permit processes to dynamically find out about and study one another, thus permitting processes to set up and thereafter supervise whole subsystems, we shall round off by discussing the advantages of introducing the machines themselves into the language, making it possible for processes to become aware of, and then ‘migrate’ within, the topological structure of a multi-processor distributed network, moving closer to their application, or just to a less-loaded processor, as the need arises. To conclude we shall contrast this new-style process-oriented language with various existing programming languages which have experimented with concurrency, either implicitly or explicitly, in order to see if, and if so how, this new style is any simpler and more powerful than its precursors.     

Lexicalization in natural language generation: A survey

In natural language generation, a meaning representation of some kind is successively transformed into a sentence or a text. Naturally, a central subtask of this problem is the choice of words, orlexicalization. In this paper, we propose four major issues that determine how a generator tackles lexicalization, and survey the contributions that researchers have made to them. Open problems are identified, and a possible direction for future research is sketched.     

EEUPL: Towards effective and efficient user profile linkage across multiple social platforms

Linking user profiles belonging to the same people across multiple social networks underlines a wide range of applications, such as cross-platform prediction, cross-platform recommendation, and advertisement. Most of existing approaches focus on pairwise user profile linkage between two platforms, which can not effectively piece up information from three or more social platforms. Different from the previous work, we investigate scalable user profile linkage across multiple social platforms by proposing an effective and efficient model called EEUPL, which can detect duplicate profiles within one platform that belong to same person and is implemented with Apache Spark for distributed execution. The model contains two key components: 1) To link cross-platform user profiles effectively, we propose an average-link strategy based clustering method. 2) To extend the model EEUPL to large-scale datasets, an Apache Spark based approach is developed. Extensive experiments are conducted on two real-world datasets, and the results demonstrate the superiority of the model EEUPL compared with the state-of-art methods.

     

Opening the black box of system usage: user adaptation to disruptive IT

According to Benbasat and Barki (2007), systems usage has remained a black box in spite of the fact that the construct lies at the heart of a host of studies in the field. We know very little about how exactly users cope with information technology (IT), especially disruptive IT. To answer such questions, we grounded our current work in Beaudry and Pinsonneault's Coping Model of User Adaptation (2005; CMUA), a model that explains user strategies appraising an IT event. These strategies are a response to threats and opportunities embedded in the IT event and are impacted by the level of control users have over the situation. In the current study, following CMUA, we develop and test measures for a deeper understanding of systems usage and user adaptation to IT through a 2 × 2 laboratory experiment. Overall, we found strong support for the CMUA model.     

Stochastic approximation and user adaptation in a competitiveresource sharing system

This paper is motivated by the work of Altman and Shimkin (1998). Customers arrive at a service center and must choose between two types of service: a channel that is shared by all currently in it and a dedicated line. The mean service cost (or time) for any customer entering the shared resource depends on the decisions of all future arrivals up to the time of departure of that customer, and so has a competitive aspect. The decision rule of each arriving customer is based on its own immediate self-interest, given the available data on the past performance. If the current estimate of the cost for the shared resource equals that of the dedicated line, any decision is possible. The procedure is a type of learning algorithm. The convergence problem is one in asynchronous stochastic approximation, where the ODE may be a differential inclusion. It is shown that, asymptotically, the performance of the learning system is that for the symmetric Nash strategy, despite the allowed arbitrariness and lack of coordination     

Automated user interface engineering with a pattern reflecting programming language

The development of the user interface concerns all aspects of a software system that are targeted to the interactive delivery of its functionality and data. Today, user interface development accounts for a large proportion of the overall software implementation, while the programming process involves various recurring software patterns. Based on the identification of key commonly occurring user interface programming patterns, we have designed and implemented a user interface programming language with built-in constructs to directly support those software patterns, offering declarative programming features such as: precondition-based actions, unidirectional constraints and data-content monitors. Initially, we introduce the deployment syntax and semantics of the novel programming elements, relying upon subject interaction scenarios. Then we reveal the most demanding implementation aspects of the code generator and the respective run-time library.     

Human-centred design methods: Developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

This article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC¹ project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children’s development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human–robot interactions.     

Cecil: a sequencing constraint language for automatic staticanalysis generation

A flexible and general mechanism for specifying problems relating to the sequencing of events and mechanically translating them into dataflow analysis algorithms capable of solving those problems is presented. Dataflow analysis has been used for quite some time in compiler code optimization. Most static analyzers have been custom-built to search for fixed and often quite limited classes of dataflow conditions. It is shown that the range of sequences for which it is interesting and worthwhile to search in actually quite broad and diverse. A formalism for specifying this diversity of conditions is created. It is shown that these conditions can be modeled essentially as dataflow analysis problems for which effective solutions are known. It is also shown how these solutions can be exploited to serve as the basis for mechanical creation of analyzers for these conditions     

Towards incremental speech generation in conversational systems

This paper presents a model of incremental speech generation in practical conversational systems. The model allows a conversational system to incrementally interpret spoken input, while simultaneously planning, realising and self-monitoring the system response. If these processes are time consuming and result in a response delay, the system can automatically produce hesitations to retain the floor. While speaking, the system utilises hidden and overt self-corrections to accommodate revisions in the system. The model has been implemented in a general dialogue system framework. Using this framework, we have implemented a conversational game application. A Wizard-of-Oz experiment is presented, where the automatic speech recognizer is replaced by a Wizard who transcribes the spoken input. In this setting, the incremental model allows the system to start speaking while the user's utterance is being transcribed. In comparison to a non-incremental version of the same system, the incremental version has a shorter response time and is perceived as more efficient by the users.     

Realistic video generation for american sign language

Multimedia Tools and Applications - There are many ways to generate sign language videos, but most of them are based on 3D character modeling. These methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive,...     

Towards a graph-based user profile modeling for a session-based personalized search

Most Web search engines use the content of the Web documents and their link structures to assess the relevance of the document to the user’s query. With the growth of the information available on the web, it becomes difficult for such Web search engines to satisfy the user information need expressed by few keywords. First, personalized information retrieval is a promising way to resolve this problem by modeling the user profile by his general interests and then integrating it in a personalized document ranking model. In this paper, we present a personalized search approach that involves a graph-based representation of the user profile. The user profile refers to the user interest in a specific search session defined as a sequence of related queries. It is built by means of score propagation that allows activating a set of semantically related concepts of reference ontology, namely the ODP. The user profile is maintained across related search activities using a graph-based merging strategy. For the purpose of detecting related search activities, we define a session boundary recognition mechanism based on the Kendall rank correlation measure that tracks changes in the dominant concepts held by the user profile relatively to a new submitted query. Personalization is performed by re-ranking the search results of related queries using the user profile. Our experimental evaluation is carried out using the HARD 2003 TREC collection and showed that our session boundary recognition mechanism based on the Kendall measure provides a significant precision comparatively to other non-ranking based measures like the cosine and the WebJaccard similarity measures. Moreover, results proved that the graph-based search personalization is effective for improving the search accuracy.     

A domain specific language notation for a language learning activity generation tool

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Globalization has increased the need for society to master new languages. This need has encouraged the launch of many applications dedicated to language...