Multimedia Interfaces: Designing for Diversity

Computer users with impaired dexterity often have difficulty accessing small, densely packed user interface elements. Past research in software-based solutions has mainly employed two approaches: modifying the interface and modifying the interaction with the cursor. Each approach, however, has limitations. Modifying the user interface by enlarging interactive elements makes access efficient for simple interfaces but increases the cost of navigation for complex ones by displacing items to screens that require tabs or scrolling to reach. Modifying the interaction with the cursor makes access possible to unmodified interfaces but may perform poorly on densely packed targets or require the user to perform multiple steps. We developed a new approach that combines the strengths of the existing approaches while minimizing their shortcomings, introducing only minimal distortion to the original interface while making access to frequently used parts of the user interface efficient and access to all other parts possible. We instantiated this concept as Adaptive Click-and-Cross, a novel interaction technique. Our user study demonstrates that, for sufficiently complex interfaces, Adaptive Click-and-Cross slightly improves the performance of users with impaired dexterity compared to only modifying the interface or only modifying the cursor.

Computer users who handle complex tasks like air traffic control (ATC) need to quickly detect updated information from multiple displays of graphical user interface. The objectives of this study are to investigate how much computer users can segment GUI display into distinctive objects within very short glances and whether human perceives complexity differently after different durations of exposure. Subjects in this empirical study were presented with 20 screenshots of web pages and software interfaces for different short durations (100ms, 500ms, 1000ms) and were asked to recall the visual objects and rate the complexity of the images. The results indicate that subjects can reliably recall 3-5 objects regardless of image complexity and exposure duration up to 1000ms. This result agrees with the magic number 4 of visual short-term memory (VSTM). Perceived complexity by subjects is consistent among the different exposure durations, and it is highly correlated with subjects' rating on the ease to segmentation as well as the image characteristics of density, layout, and color use.

Everyday digital tasks can highly benefit from systems that recommend the right information to use at the right time. However, existing solutions typically support only specific applications and tasks. In this demo, we showcase EntityBot, a system that captures context across application boundaries and recommends information entities related to the current task. The user’s digital activity is continuously monitored by capturing all content on the computer screen using optical character recognition. This includes all applications and services being used and specific to individuals’ computer usages such as instant messaging, emailing, web browsing, and word processing. A linear model is then applied to detect the user’s task context to retrieve entities such as applications, documents, contact information, and several keywords determining the task. The system has been evaluated with real-world tasks, demonstrating that the recommendation had an impact on the tasks and led to high user satisfaction.

The chapter is intended to introduce Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), a widely spreading but largely unknown epidemic among professional and ordinary computer users, especially internet users. Dr. Sheedy and Dr. Anshel are two leading researchers in the ergonomics and optometry fields, and CVS has been extensively studied in these fields. The authors have summarized their views about CVS, including five major symptoms of CVS, three key contributing factors of CVS, and basic preventive and treatment strategies. Future researches are needed to continue the advancement of current knowledge regarding computer screens, computer task, and computer environments, and to expand research in diverse computer user populations, especially younger computer users.

The ongoing utilization of computer technologies in all areas of life leads to the development of smart environments comprising numerous networked devices and resources. Interacting in and with such environments requires new interaction paradigms, abstracting from single interaction devices to utilize the environment as interaction space. Using a networked set of interaction resources allows supporting multiple modalities and new interaction techniques, but also requires the consideration of the set of devices and the adaptation to this set at runtime. While the generation of user interfaces based on UI models, although still challenging, has been widely researched, the runtime processing and delivery of the derivable user interfaces has gained less attention. Delivering distributed user interfaces while maintaining their interdependencies and keeping them synchronized is not a trivial problem. In this paper we present an approach to realize a runtime environment, capable of distributing user interfaces to a varying set of devices to support multimodal interaction based on a user interface model and the management of interaction resources.Keywordsmultimodal distributed user interfacesmodel-based user interfaceshuman-computer interactionsmart environments

At the time of this paper, the advances in light field technology already offer 3D displays that immerse the users without the need for additional viewing devices. Despite the numerous advantages and attractive capabilities of such glasses-free 3D displays, their user interface methods are quite complicated and they are currently underwhelming when compared to conventional 2D displays, due to the fact that visual feedback can only be rendered sharply on the emission surface of light field displays. The sharp rendering of user interfaces is a necessity, as blur may hinder their fundamental functions. When it comes to 2D displays, many user interaction techniques and interfaces have been devised. Rendering a user interface on a 2D display could be done in various ways, such as rendering overlays on top of the rendered scene, or by using billboards. These are extensively used in modern video games. User interaction methods have proven their importance and added efficiency to virtual environments throughout the years. Due to their overall value and usefulness, interaction techniques develop immediately as new types of displays arise. With the recent advancements in visualization technologies, user interfaces have been redesigned for use in AR, VR and MR visualization. This includes on-screen augmentation, which enables interaction with visual content on the screen. Although light field displays contain immense potentials, only basic user interfaces have been devised thus far, including FOX (Focus Sliding surface), which grants users the option to scale and to rotate 3D objects. In this paper, we visualize the theater model on real light field displays and we test the different interactions by means of a monitor room. The theatre model is analogous to real-life theatres, where viewers may observe the theatrical presentation on the stage from various angles. The motivation to choose the theater model was the fact that light field visualization similarly allows multiple simultaneous viewers within its field of view, in which the content can be observed in an angle- dependent manner. Moreover, from the users’ perspective, the theater model is thus familiar and it provides high-quality visual feedback. Furthermore, theater stages encompass a lot of interactions, including rigging and flying systems, pulleys, rotating stages, lights, curtains etc. In order to test the different interaction methods on light field displays, a theater model depicting the virtual environment was implemented. Methods for rendering the monitor room and the results of the interactions are discussed in the paper, illustrated by images of the actual visualization on light field displays. It is shown that producing plausible results with no noticeable visual artifacts is challenging, yet possible. The scientific contributions of the paper also highlight the various novel user interfaces for future light field systems and services.

This chapter will show you how to use and specialise UML diagrams for describing the user interfaces of a software system. In order to accomplish the description of user interfaces, the proposed technique considers three specialised UML diagrams called user-interaction, user-interface, and GUI-class diagrams, which will be built following a model-driven development (MDD) perspective. These diagrams can be seen as the UML-based UI models of the system. In addition, this chapter is concerned with code-generation to implement the user interfaces of the system by using GUI-class diagrams and user-interaction diagrams. A case study of an Internet book shopping system is introduced in this chapter to proof and illustrate the proposed user interaction and interface design technique.

LanguageGame is a tool for a non-professional computer user to make a new programming language. Playing with LanguageGame allows a user to make an original new programming language. In order to give an instruction to a computer, now we have many ways such as selecting menu, push button, drag icon or so. Recent researches of computer user interface have developed various methods of interacting with computer. Above all, with using WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) way, user interface becomes very rich and useful for non-engineer users. But yet, the most fundamental way of having a dialog with computer is to input a sequence of command kind of programming language. Using WYSIWIG style has advantages when a user uses a computer instead of real paper. But to deal with more abstract or involved matter, using a programming language has more benefit because symbols are more stable and we can use powerful idea as a recursiveness or a reference with such language. The importance of programming language could never change however GUI will be more improved. There are various languages in the world, and there are many interesting aspects and tastes in each language. As the grammars of the programming language are very interesting, developing a language must be more fun. Of course making a language seemed to be difficult. And it was planned to develop a parser generator that common people can make their own language easily. A parser generator is one of the most basic software in computer. Historically, various programming languages have been developed. And to make developing their parser easily, the technique of automatic parser generation was found. Now the parser generator becomes established technology. LanguageGame is such a parser generator that has graphical user interface. Contrary to popular professional parser generator like yacc/lex in UNIX platform, it is intended to use non-professional computer users, students and children. Playing with LanguageGame, users can learn and build simple parser with pretty graphical interface, drag-and-drop and graphical syntax tree representation. In current implementation, LanguageGame is developed on Squeak - a free open environment of Smalltalk. Hereby, the user grammar with LanguageGame can use all objects like a sketch and sound in Squeak.

Modeling tools typically have their own interaction methods for combining virtual objects. For realistic composition in 3D space, many researchers from the fields of virtual and augmented reality have been trying to develop intuitive interactive techniques using novel interfaces. However, many modeling applications require a long learning time for novice users because of unmanageable interfaces. In this paper, we propose two-handed tangible augmented reality interaction techniques that provide an easy-to-learn and natural combination method using simple augmented blocks. We have designed a novel interface called the cubical user interface, which has two tangible cubes that are tracked by marker tracking. Using the interface, we suggest two types of interactions based on familiar metaphors from real object assembly. The first, the screw-driving method, recognizes the user’s rotation gestures and allows them to screw virtual objects together. The second, the block-assembly method, adds objects based on their direction and position relative to predefined structures. We evaluate the proposed methods in detail with a user experiment that compares the different methods.

Computers have been used for language therapy for aphasia persons. It is known that the usage of computer is effective for it. There are many problems for it but our interests are especially about the aspect of information visualization and interaction between computers and aphasia persons. In this paper, we report a prototype of rehabilitation system and the evaluation of the system by aphasia persons and speech therapists (STs). Aphasia persons have troubles to understand language. Most of them have troubles to read sentences. Also most of them have troubles to write characters and also lines in hand because the cause of aphasia is damages to the left part of brain. The proposed rehabilitation system allows aphasia persons to undergo treatment without writing characters or lines. Since they are not good at reading sentences, the user interface is designed especially using information visualization, as few characters. The evaluation of the system by aphasia persons and STs results good grade and both of them want to use the rehabilitation system by tablet computers much further.

The paper describes how 3D-based visualization and interaction techniques can be used in information retrieval user interfaces. It demonstrates that information retrieval systems based on state of the art retrieval models can be supplied with an intuitive interface functionality by applying the cone-tree metaphor for the visualization of content spaces. The natural ability of humans for spatial perception, orientation and spatial memories is outlined as an advantage in the process of perceiving information spaces by means of spatial metaphors. It is shown how the models, concepts and mechanisms of the retrieval system underlying its user interface can become more transparent and perceptible for the user at the interface level and how some of the cognitive costs of navigations in information spaces can be reduced. This goal is achieved by transforming document-term networks with two levels of abstraction into hierarchical and directed cone trees that use the spatial depth of 3D to achieve an easy perception of their topological structure. Finally the paper presents a 3D-based information system user interface which gives the user intuitive control over content-oriented search paths resulting in a query generation for the underlying automatic retrieval mechanisms. In order to improve the presentation of the query results as well, it is shown that 3D-based graphical metaphors can provide very intuitive ways of perceiving the relevance of the result in accordance to the query.

In this paper, we propose a new interface to control VR(Virtual reality) contents, games, and animations in real-time using the user’s breath and the acceleration sensor of a mobile device. Although interaction techniques are very important in VR and physically-based animations, UI(User interface) methods using different types of devices or controllers have not been covered. Most of the proposed interaction techniques have focused on screen touch and motion recognition. The direction of the breath is calculated using the position and angle between the user and the mobile device, and the control position to handle the contents is determined using the acceleration sensor built into the mobile device. Finally, to remove the noise contained in the input breath, the magnitude of the wind is filtered using a kernel modeling a pattern similar to the actual breath. To demonstrate the superiority of this study, we produced real-time interaction results by applying the breath as an external force of VR contents, games, and animations.

The Unit framework uses a dataflow programming language to describe interaction techniques for highly interactive environments, such as augmented, mixed, and virtual reality. Unit places interaction techniques in an abstraction layer between the input devices and the application, which allows the application developer to separate application functionality from interaction techniques and behavior.Unit's modular approach leads to the design of reusable application-independent interaction control components, portions of which can be distributed across different machines. Unit makes it possible at run time to experiment with interaction technique behavior, as well as to switch among different input device configurations. We provide both a visual interface and a programming API for the specification of the dataflow. To demonstrate how Unit works and to show the benefits to the interaction design process, we describe a few interaction techniques implemented using Unit. We also show how Unit's distribution mechanism can offload CPU intensive operations, as well as avoid costly special-purpose hardware in experimental setups.

In this contribution, we propose a hybrid interaction technique that integrates near-field and object-space interaction techniques for manipulating objects at a distance in virtual reality (VR). The objective of the hybrid interaction technique was to seamlessly leverage the strengths of both the near-field and object-space manipulation techniques. We employed bimanual near-field metaphor with scaled replica (BMSR) as our near-field interaction technique, which enabled us to perform multilevel degrees-of-freedom (DoF) separation transformations, such as 1~3DoF translation, 1~3DoF uniform and anchored scaling, 1DoF and 3DoF rotation, and 6DoF simultaneous translation and rotation, with enhanced depth perception and fine motor control provided by near-field manipulation techniques. The object-space interaction technique we utilized was the classic Scaled HOMER, which is known to be effective and appropriate for coarse transformations in distant object manipulation. In a repeated measures within-subjects evaluation, we empirically evaluated the three interaction techniques for their accuracy, efficiency, and economy of movement in pick-and-place, docking, and tunneling tasks in VR. Our findings revealed that the near-field BMSR technique outperformed the object space Scaled HOMER technique in terms of accuracy and economy of movement, but the participants performed more slowly overall with BMSR. Additionally, our results revealed that the participants preferred to use the hybrid interaction technique, as it allowed them to switch and transition seamlessly between the constituent BMSR and Scaled HOMER interaction techniques, depending on the level of accuracy, precision and efficiency required.

This book is Volume III of the series DSP for MATLAB™ and LabVIEW™. Volume III covers digital filter design, including the specific topics of FIR design via windowed-ideal-lowpass filter, FIR highpass, bandpass, and bandstop filter design from windowed-ideal lowpass filters, FIR design using the transition-band-optimized Frequency Sampling technique (implemented by Inverse-DFT or Cosine/Sine Summation Formulas), design of equiripple FIRs of all standard types including Hilbert Transformers and Differentiators via the Remez Exchange Algorithm, design of Butterworth, Chebyshev (Types I and II), and Elliptic analog prototype lowpass filters, conversion of analog lowpass prototype filters to highpass, bandpass, and bandstop filters, and conversion of analog filters to digital filters using the Impulse Invariance and Bilinear Transform techniques. Certain filter topologies specific to FIRs are also discussed, as are two simple FIR types, the Comb and Moving Average filters. The entire series consists of four volumes that collectively cover basic digital signal processing in a practical and accessible manner, but which nonetheless include all essential foundation mathematics. As the series title implies, the scripts (of which there are more than 200) described in the text and supplied in code form here will run on both MATLAB™ and LabVIEW™. The text for all volumes contains many examples, and many useful computational scripts, augmented by demonstration scripts and LabVIEW™ Virtual Instruments (VIs) that can be run to illustrate various signal processing concepts graphically on the user's computer screen. Volume I consists of four chapters that collectively set forth a brief overview of the field of digital signal processing, useful signals and concepts (including convolution, recursion, difference equations, LTI systems, etc), conversion from the continuous to discrete domain and back (i.e., analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion), aliasing, the Nyquist rate, normalized frequency, sample rate conversion and Mu-law compression, and signal processing principles including correlation, the correlation sequence, the Real DFT, correlation by convolution, matched filtering, simple FIR filters, and simple IIR filters. Chapter four of Volume I, in particular, provides an intuitive or first principle understanding of how digital filtering and frequency transforms work. Volume II provides detailed coverage of discrete frequency transforms, including a brief overview of common frequency transforms, both discrete and continuous, followed by detailed treatments of the Discrete Time Fourier Transform (DTFT), the z-Transform (including definition and properties, the inverse z-transform, frequency response via z-transform, and alternate filter realization topologies including Direct Form, Direct Form Transposed, Cascade Form, Parallel Form, and Lattice Form), and the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) (including Discrete Fourier Series, the DFT-IDFT pair, DFT of common signals, bin width, sampling duration, and sample rate, the FFT, the Goertzel Algorithm, Linear, Periodic, and Circular convolution, DFT Leakage, and computation of the Inverse DFT). Volume IV, the culmination of the series, is an introductory treatment of LMS Adaptive Filtering and applications, and covers cost functions, performance surfaces, coefficient perturbation to estimate the gradient, the LMS algorithm, response of the LMS algorithm to narrow-band signals, and various topologies such as ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) or system modeling, Periodic Signal Removal/Prediction/Adaptive Line Enhancement (ALE), Interference Cancellation, Echo Cancellation (with single- and dual-H topologies), and Inverse Filtering/Deconvolution/Equalization. Table of Contents: Principles of FIR Design / FIR Design Techniques / Classical IIR Design