At the core of the vision of User Interfaces for All is a mix of existing and emerging technologies, which are likely to predominate the life cycle of future user interfaces to a wide range of applications and telematic services; these interfaces must be both accessible and provide high quality interaction to potentially all users, so as to be usable by a diverse user population, including people with different cultural, educational, training and employment background, novice and experienced computer users, the very young and the elderly, and people with different types of disabilities, in various interaction contexts and scenarios of use.
“The theory of inclusive design tends to require user involvement and iterative assessment throughout the whole design process. However, in an industrial context, companies are restricted by design constraints such as time and cost. Through investigating eight projects focusing on inclusive design, the authors highlight discrepancies between theoretical models and industry practice and analyse the underlying reasons. Related issues such as bottom-up design approaches and estimates of design exclusion are also discussed. It is concluded that a change of attitudes towards people with disabilities by people commissioning, as well as performing, design and the provision of design support tools are necessary to bring inclusive design theory and practice closer together.”
“We present two analytical techniques, namely scenario screening and growth scenarios, for engineering universal access into interactive applications and services. The techniques are intended to bridge across design reflection and envisioning of new practices through use cases. They foster an exploratory approach to design, progressively leading to an understanding of the global execution context of tasks, thus towards universal access. In this paper, we elaborate on the rationale and basic concepts behind scenario screening and growth scenarios, and discuss their application in a small case study in the domain of Health Telematics.”
“In several computer applications, end-users are experts in a specific domain, not necessarily experts in computer science, who use computer environments to perform their daily tasks. In this paper we present a methodology for designing interactive systems based on the development of multimedia and multimodal environments for supporting the activities of such domain-expert users. We call these environments Software Shaping Workshops: they aim at easing the way people program and interact with computers, thus allowing domain-expert users to develop software applications without the burden of using a traditional programming language, but using high level visual languages tailored to their needs. It is shown how this design methodology is easily applicable through the software tool BANCO.”
“USERfit is a well-established methodology focused on the generation of usability specifications, specifically created for the Assistive Technology field that proved to be very suitable for the Design for All paradigm. This methodology uses paper-based forms to store and propagate the design related information. For this reason, some issues, such us the inclusion and elimination of new users or contexts of use or the need to propagate the results between forms, make the specification process tedious. This paper presents an application called USERfit Tool developed in order to facilitate the use of the USERfit design environment. In addition, USERfit Tool allows for the reuse of previously developed material and the sharing of design information among remote groups of designers, maintaining coherence and compatibility.”
“As a basis for user needs and system design assessments in assistive technology (AT), we have developed a new conceptual framework and battery of tests and research paradigms, on a continuing improvement basis. The framework consists of three levels, to provide; overall guidance, specific models for understanding data and task analysis. Following earlier work [1], we report three case studies, considering attentional problems and user-specific needs, to validate our core test elements and conceptual framework. Our systematic method generated specific benefits for our users and pointed out the need for cognitive software in assistive technology.”
“e-Government is an important field of application for providing electronic public services to a wide range of users. Especially in the public sector, the customers are very heterogeneous with different expertise and know-how on using electronic media such as the Internet. Moreover, the public sector is characterised by providing a wide range of different kinds of public services varying for the distinct user groups. Developing appropriate, user-friendly portal interfaces for virtual administrations, which offer a broad range of public services to the distinct user groups, requires a careful investigation of the user needs and service requirements. In this contribution, we provide a first examination of usability and easy-to-use requirements in relation to target user groups and process models for electronic public service delivery. We define an overall interface architecture and discuss the required front-office functionality for a user-friendly and intuitive e-Government portal serving distinct target groups.”
“This paper presents results from a user study and a set of design sessions conducted in a broadcasting company. During the design sessions, the designers created new concepts of interactive television programs for given TV viewers. The creative work was based on user profiles collected in the preceding user study. The aim of research was to include the future users into the product development in the early stages of new product design. Both TV viewers and designers created innovations of future interactive applications and the results are discussed.”
“Traditional human-computer interaction settings involve a task-oriented approach where the human interacts with an application to accomplish a particular goal. The emergence of media-rich computer-mediated leisure applications requires a fresh view of the current paradigms and a careful examination of how this change of perspective affects their relevance. This paper proposes a metaphor for accessing personalized television programming and suggests an approach for integrating the metaphor into the design of a television user interface. The proposed metaphor is tested in the design of a personalized advertising service. The results of the empirical research are discussed and the suitability of the metaphor for other television programs is examined.”
“Research in the area of universal access has gained a wide interest in the past 7 years [1]. This is attributed to the versatility of the subject and its prospect in a wide range of applications for pervasive computing technology. This paper considers the prospects and challenges of providing universal access to a multimodal interactive television (ITV) content. First, the paper overviews the evolution of the ITV technology: the market, the distinctive features, and the developmental needs and requirements. Second, the paper discusses the relevance of the concept of universal access and its portability to an ITV platform. Third, the paper considers the ITV presentation of financial news and tickers by a virtual human avatar as a case study of an innovative prototype for Business Television (BTV) that reveals the prospects and challenges of universal access to a domain specific ITV content. The case study proposes a new paradigm for authoring universally accessible multimodal ITV content and draws a future research agenda in this respect.”
“Many studies have already shown the advantages of building multimodal systems. In this case study we have shown the advantages of combining natural language and a graphical interface in the interactive TV domain. In this paper we describe a multimodal dialogue TV program guide system that is a research prototype built for the case study by adding speech interaction to an already existing TV program guide. Study results indicate positive attitudes towards providing two input modes -- spoken natural language input and direct manipulation by means of remote control.”
“The paper describes research undertaken to provide the empirical basis for engendering group or community identification in future iterations of an adaptive community-based collaborative virtual environment (CVE) designed to facilitate communication where there are mutual concerns or interests among virtual communities within or across organizations. The system taken as an example in this paper consists of a WWW-based collaborative virtual environment comprised of intelligent software agents that support explicit information sharing, chance meetings, and real time informal communication. Results from ethnography, questionnaires, and Persona design inform future directions that include cultural cues in intelligent community-based systems in order to enhance information sharing and real time communication among strangers toward more equitable cultural representation for all. It is argued that users' experiences are enhanced in community-based virtual environments through supporting intercultural communication and designing opportunities for equitable representation of and identification with individual, group, and organizational cultures.”
“We report the results of a study investigating the age related differences as they relate to the depth versus breadth tradeoff in hierarchical online information systems. Different stimulus of various depth and breadth combinations and expandable or non-expandable structure were used. Participants from two age groups (aged 36 years old and younger or 57 years old and older) took part in this study. Overall, shallow hierarchies were preferred to deep hierarchies. Seniors were slower but did not make more errors than their younger counterparts when browsing the different treatments.”
“This paper aims at stimulating further discussion about future work in the realm of "Intelligent Environments of Use" (EoUs). Under concern are Sociable Information Environments. Up to now user interface design has been discussed with regard to standardization or even personalization. User interfaces which push towards sociability will have a new quality which implies a seamless symbiosis between humans, EoUs and the real world. Some examples of "visualizing presence in social cyberspaces" show the importance of sociable user interface to reflect group performance and cohesion. Sociological reasoning to define a conceptual model for sociable interface design is grounded on two sociological concepts; "situated life" and "supply and demand concatenation". The concept of supply and demand concatenation" has to be operationalized by ontologies to be derived from the circumstances of "situated life" in different societal subsystems.”
“The key concept of Universal Access in the Information Society has important and far-reaching implications for the design of a wide range of systems and data sources. This paper sets out to examine two fundamentally conflicting aspects of the broad principle of universality in design, pointing to the opposite requirement that, in many applications, access to a system or set of data must be limited to an identifiable population of "authorised" users. However, the idea of universality then applies at a lower level, since the mechanisms used to impose these limitations should themselves not be dependent on the physical attributes or expertise of individuals, but rather related to their identity and designated level of authorisation. This leads to an interesting situation where the concept of universality must be implemented at different levels and, equally, must be balanced against the competing claims of the constraints imposed by authorisation-determined selectivity. This paper argues that technology based on biometric processing -- the exploitation of measurements relating to individual physiological or behavioural attributes -- provides a key platform on which an access management structure can be realised. Experimental results based on various biometric modalities are used to support and illustrate the ideas proposed.”
“To augment everyday environments as interface to computing may lead to more accessible and inclusive user interfaces, exploiting affordances existing in the physical world for interaction with digital functionality. A major challenge for such interfaces is to preserve accustomed uses while providing unobtrusive access to new services. In this paper we discuss augmentation of common surfaces such as tables as generic pointing device. The basic concept is to sense the load, the load changes and the patterns of change observed on a surface using embedded load sensors. We describe the interaction model used to derive pointing actions from basic sensor observations, and detail the technical augmentation of two ordinary tables that we used for our experiments. The technology effectively emulates a serial mouse, and our implementation and use experience prove that it is unobtrusive, robust, and both intuitively and reliably usable.”
“With the emergence of the mobile Internet combined with wearable personal computing, we are now entering a new information era where PCs are self-adapting their resources to human bodies, minds and preferences, prevailing a more effective work environment. In this new world, working effectively is inextricably related to accessing reliable information sources when needed. Therefore, people eager to stay connected, consume daily information in a myriad of forms: news, weather, business, road/traffic reports, voicemails, emails, as well as information associated to their daily activities or interests. In this paper, we propose innovative UI information presentations based on three-dimensional (3D) audio modeling. In this framework, we illustrate how news, weather and business reports are extracted, spatialized and presented to end-users using 3D audio modality.”
“Tactical audio uses audio feedback to facilitate the precise and accurate positioning of an object with respect to some other object. Existing solutions in pointing and trajectory based Human Computer Interface (HCI) tasks have primarily explored visual feedback, sometimes in rather limited conditions. In this paper we have examined different sonification paradigms for tactical audio to improve the accuracy of pursuit tracking. We have developed a multimodal simulation system as an open environment for evaluation of different sonification and visualization techniques in tactical audio applications. The environment is implemented as an audio-visual scene using the Java3D package. The paper presents the quantitative results of of three pursuit tracking applications using a combination of acoustic and visual guidance and different background conditions. Experiments with 19 participants have shown that acoustic presentation improves the quality of human-computer interaction and”
“This paper describes the design of a perceptual user interface for controlling a flying cartoon-animated dragon in QuiQui's Giant Bounce, a physically and vocally interactive computer game for 4 to 9 years old children. The dragon mimics the user's movements and breathes fire when the user shouts. The game works on a PC computer equipped with practically any low-cost microphone and webcam. It is targeted for uncontrolled real-life environments such as homes and schools.”
“The augmentation of computer technologies with multimodal interfaces has great potential for improving interaction with these technologies via the use of different sensory feedback. This may be of particular importance for individuals from divergent user populations, who have varying interaction needs and abilities. This study examines the effects of a multimodal interface, utilizing auditory, haptic, and visual feedback, on the performance of elderly users with varying levels of visual abilities. Older adults who possess normal vision (n=29) and those who have been diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) (n=30), with different levels of visual acuity, were involved in the study. Participants were asked to complete a series of `drag-and-drop' tasks under varying forms of feedback. User performance was assessed with the measure of final target highlight time. The findings suggest that the addition of other feedback modalities, to the traditionally used visual feedback form, can enhance the performance of users, particularly those with visual impairments.”
“Traditional ways to handle user input in software are uncomfortable when an application wishes to use novel input devices. This is especially the case in gesture based user interfaces. In this paper we describe these problems and as a solution we present an architecture and an implementation of a user input toolkit. We show that the higher level processing of user input such as gesture recognition requires a whole new kind of paradigm. The system we designed and implemented -- FLexible User Input Design (FLUID) -- is a lightweight library that can be used in different kinds of software. The potential application areas include all system where novel input devices are in use: virtual reality, entertainment systems and embedded systems.”
“This paper answers an important question concerning the effectiveness of anthropomorphic user interface feedback. The issue of effectiveness has been unresolved for some time, despite the efforts of various prominent computer scientists. By means of a carefully controlled tractable experiment, significant statistical evidence has been found to suggest that anthropomorphism at the user interface in the context of online systems usage is more effective than a non-anthropomorphic method of feedback. Furthermore, the results can be generalised to most software systems for online systems usage, thus potentially changing the way user interface feedback is designed, developed and thought about. This will lead to the improvement of user interfaces making them more usable, more effective and more accessible to all. Computer systems are being used more and more, where potentially every household and work environment will have a computer in the near future. Hence making systems accessible to all, including `non-traditional' users is becoming increasingly more important. This research is making a contribution to this general aim.”
“Computers are becoming more and more ubiquitous, moving from the desktop into our everyday life. Today's challenge is to build a suitable visualization architecture for anthropomorphic conversational user interfaces which will run on different devices like laptops, PDAs and mobile phones. This new kind of interface will be adaptive to the current user, personal preferences, the history of the conversation, the device and the current context. Concrete implementations as a part of conversational interfaces are User-Interface Avatars, anthropomorphic representatives on the base of artificial 2D or 3D characters. The user can talk to an avatar on every device he is using. The avatar system is designed to exchange different graphical representations of the avatar easily. The existing system and ongoing work on optimization and renderers implementation are discussed.”
“This work presents an agent-based interface that is not merely re-active to some user request, but is proactive since it is capable of engaging in a goal-directed conversation with the user, e.g., by taking the initiative to recommend new products. The naturalness of interaction, especially for casual users, is enhanced by appropriate 2D facial models. The proactiveness of the agent is based on a recommendation engine that combines content-based retrieval, which exploits user profiles based on content features extracted from the dialogue and descriptions of items that users find relevant, with collaborative filtering, which clusters users according to their expressed taste to generate recommendations within these virtual communities. The proposed system has been evaluated and validated by using a top-down approach, focusing on the system/user interaction.”
“The paper reports on a usability evaluation of a full-screen magnifier. The evaluation was conducted with seven registered blind users in half-hour comprehension-based sessions using the `thinking aloud protocol'. The goals of the study were to determine whether joystick control of a screen magnifier was useful. The users found joystick control intuitive and easy to use. The feature with the strongest support was automatically scrolling through the text; the most significant usability problem was over-sensitivity of the joystick in certain modes.”
“Touch-Screen Technology is the most natural of all input devices -- even children can easily learn how to operate them. But this simple interaction proved also to be ideal for people who are not overly familiar with computers including elderly and/or disabled patients in a hospital. A pilot system of an interactive Patient Communications System (PACOSY) has been developed in a User Centered Design (UCD) process. Patients were enabled to retrieve and enter information interactively via various touch screen systems connected to the Hospital Intranet. This paper concentrates primarily on experimental experiences with touch technology and the technological requirements for a touch based Patient Information System (PATIS) serving as Point of Information (POI) for patients within a hospital or a future Point of Consultation (POC). People with low or no computer literacy found using touch screens easy and motivating. Together with a cheap, simple and user friendly interface design, such systems can enhance universal access within an information society for all.”
“A positive aspect of aiming for universal design is that solutions developed for people with particular needs can prove of benefit to all users. Such a case is described here. A prototype augmentative communication system has been developed which could give non-speaking people a multi-lingual capability. It is based on research into conversational modelling and utterance prediction, making use of prestored material. In fact, the system could also be used by people whose only communication disadvantage is not being able to speak a foreign language. A unique feature of the system is that both the non-speaking person and the communication partner will use this communicator in their dialogue. In comparison with a multi-lingual phrase book, the system helped the users to have more natural conversation, and to take more control of the interaction.”
“The E-cane is an electronic aid equipment for the visually impaired to widely detect the obstacles that normal white cane cannot reach. We propose a situation presumption algorithm, "Wall/Floor-strategy" for the E-cane, which is capable of detecting the presuming the condition of spot where the blind user is stepping into. When some obstacles are recognised, E-cane informs the user about the types of the obstacles; the walls, gaps, stairs and so on by vibration and voice. This paper presents our proto-type implementation and some experimental results, that show the effectiveness of the proposed system.”
“The current methods available for text entry on small mobile devices suffer from poor performance which presents a potential barrier to acceptance and growth. Our analysis of mobile text entry indicates that the likely solution lies in aggressive use of language technology which is beyond the capabilities of current mobile devices. We argue that research in augmentative and alternative communication is highly relevant to the mobile text entry problem and offers the opportunity to research solutions that will be possible on future generations of mobile devices. Fewer input buttons, Natural Language Prosessing (NLP) and multimodal inputs are techniques applied in our design.”
“The application of appropriate web site design and evaluation methods help to ensure more usable and accessible web sites. While in the literature guidelines and evaluation methods for accessibility and usability are given and discussed separately, we aim to identify the relationships between these two concepts, in particular considering usability criteria for accessible web sites. In this work, we propose a set of usability criteria for accessible web sites in order to improve the navigability for special users, i.e. the vision impaired. The identification of the 16 criteria suggested herein was performed through empirical feedback, in which simple hypotheses were formulated, then tested. Subsequently, a systematic method was developed on the basis of the tests, resulting in a classification of the criteria according to usability aspects. The proposed criteria have been applied to an existing public administration web site.”
“The functionality offered by interconnected devices in a networked home will be drastically increased by the possibilities of always-on broadband Internet. This broadband connection can enhance the communication among family members and friends. It can also make it easy to share content and activities such as watching a movie together or listen to the same music while having a videophone chat. While using all these functions people want to be able to move freely through their home. The advance of portable devices fulfils this need for mobility. These portable devices can be used either in isolation or in co-operation with the stationary devices in the house. Two novel interaction concepts are described that support sociability and mobility for people inhabiting the connected home.”
“Academic research in mobile and ubiquitous computing has been mainly technology-driven. There is not enough understanding on what everyday needs are related to future mobile and ubiqitous computing. In this paper we will demonstrate that qualitative user data can be successfully utilized in designing for everyday activities of largely neglected user groups like the elderly. We will show how ethnographically based research can benefit the innovation of product concepts.”
“As electronic services are spreading in our society, they will need to be able to adapt to different users and different usage contexts. Different user interfaces will be needed for different devices and different contexts. We envision a way of developing services where the ability to adapt is included from the start. We use a set of interaction acts combined with customization information to create tailored user interfaces. A calendar service has been implemented with user interfaces for Java Swing, HTML and std I/O.”
“This paper describes the process and outcomes of the evaluation of a user interface prototype running on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The prototype was developed in the context of the IST-funded project WARD-IN-HAND and implements a PDA version of a ward information system. The evaluation, carried out by the IS4ALL project, was based on a usage scenario comprising mock-ups and textual descriptions of the typical tasks of the system. Although the evaluation revealed a range of usability issues to be addressed, in this paper we consider only those which feature prominent in the vast majority of PDA-based applications, such as adaptability, individualisation, user profiling, alternative dialogue styles, localisation, etc., and propose design solutions of general purpose, as a basis for improved design practice.”
“Inspection techniques are a useful tool for identifying potential usability problems and for integrating at an early stage evaluation with design processes. Most inspection techniques, however, do not consider users' thinking and may only be used for a limited range of devices and use contexts. We present an inspection technique based on five metaphors of essential aspects of human thinking. The aspects considered are habit; the stream of thought; awareness and associations; the relation between utterances and thought; and knowing. The proposed inspection technique makes users' thinking the centre of evaluation and is readily applicable to new devices and non-traditional use contexts. Initial experience with the technique suggests that it is usable in discussing and evaluating user interfaces.”
“Can the addition of sound enhance the reading experience on small screens when using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) for dynamic text presentation? In this paper we introduce Sonified RSVP and report findings from a usability evaluation where the experience of reading texts enhanced with nomic auditory icons was evaluated. At a comfortable pace 12 subjects read long Swedish texts of equal difficulty with and without the addition of sound on a handheld device. Reading speed (M 217 wpm) and comprehension (M 58% correct) did not differ significantly between the two conditions. The evaluation revealed a rather high task load for both conditions but no significant differences. However, the subjective rating of Immersion was rated significantly higher for the Sonified condition. Causes, implications and directions for further work are discussed based on these findings.”
“A Universal Remote Console is a device that can be used to operate any compatible services or devices. The Universal Remote Console (URC) renders a user interface for the target service or device in a way that accommodates the user's needs and preferences. The V2 technical committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) is currently developing a standard for "Alternative User Interface Access" that includes URCs. This paper describes preliminary design aspects of the standard under development, in particular an XML-based language that is used to communicate an abstract user interface definition for the target service or device to a URC. Prototypical implementations for URCs developed at the Trace Center serve as the basis for experimental research for the standard under development, and will be demonstrated at the workshop.”
“Accessibility guidelines are aimed at all those with a role and responsibility in the procurement and development of IT products and services. However, many important members of this diverse audience find these guidelines difficult to use. The result is products with in-built accessibility barriers. This paper describes the structure and presentation of a new set of Irish national IT accessibility guidelines. Drawing lessons from past failures, it describes how this structure was developed. The development involved extensive consultation with prospective users of the guidelines, in an inclusive user-centred process. Preliminary feedback at this early stage indicates that the new structure is effective, even in the absence of legislation. The account underlines the importance of usability in creating useful resources of this type.”
“The increasing amount of new technologies (including multimedia, internet and virtual reality) allows us to use new approaches in design and implementation of applications of various kinds. Specific requirements emerge in the case of users with specific needs. One such example might be the use of 3D information in the web environment (and navigation in such an environment) by visually impaired users. Our solution provides semantic and functional description of the scene objects and inter-object relations in addition to "standard" geometric scene description. This approach permits the user to query for various information in the virtual environment (e.g. searching for a path to a specific object, searching for an object with specific properties and particularly filtering scene information). The system should allow the visually impaired user to virtually walk through the scene and query for information about the objects in a scene. In such a way they are able to obtain information that has been available to users without visual impairments. The user interface itself provides the feedback in accordance with the user's group's specific requirements -- the feedback is implemented as a human readable text that can be simply accessed using one of the common accessibility tools (screen reader, Braille display etc.). The embedded module capable of providing speech output has also been implemented.”
“We are developing a survival-information registration system called IAA system. The IAA system allows disaster victims to register their survival information (kind of injuries, damage to property, etc.) through the Internet. However, elderly people were hard to register survival information because they were poor at using keyboard. We developed interactive fax user interface, which allows a user to check and correct the handwritten information using paper user interface. Experimental result showed that elderly people could register their survival information without help.”
“As User Interfaces for All penetrate software applications, multi-dimensional design concepts become increasingly important. Both, for structured and user-oriented interface development, model-based approaches have turned out to be beneficial. However, most of these approaches remain vague with respect to the explicit representation of information about users and different modalities of interaction, as well as the structural and dynamic interfacing of user models to context and interaction models. However, these interfaces are required to provide different access possibilities for a functional core, and to allow switching between different modalities of interaction when serving a variety of users. In this paper we structure the requirements and evaluate existing model-based representation schemes against the structured set of requirements. The results reveal that model-based representation schemes should be enhanced through dedicated relationships and interface-management capabilities to mutually tune the models representing users, tasks, application-domain data, interaction styles and interactive devices.”
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Mar 19th, 2010
