Physical Selection as Tangible User Interface

In the Ubiquitous Computing Environment (UCE) context, the successful provision of user-required services necessitates the collaboration of various system components, encompassing hardware parts, software components, and network connections. The utilization of UCE has presented some difficulties to customers seeking services in a diverse environment, including excessive Memory Usage (MU) and prolonged Component Construction Time (CCT). To optimize the user's experience, fuzzy agent employs a non-intrusive approach in online deep-rooted learning to get insights into user behavior. Integrating the advancements mentioned above aims to enhance the connectivity between users and information technology devices by utilizing an invisible network of UCE devices, creating dynamic computational environments that can effectively meet the users' needs. This work presents a unique methodology called Fuzzy Agent Middleware to Enhance User Experiences (FAM-EUI), which aims to improve user experiences in contexts where computer technology is seamlessly incorporated into everyday activities. This research endeavors to tackle the issues associated with imprecise data and enhance user-friendly interactions by integrating fuzzy logic with intelligent agents. The results highlight the potential of FAM in enhancing user interaction within ubiquitous soft computing, leading to improved efficiency and user-centered computing systems. This study provides valuable insights into integrating soft computing and agent-based technologies to enhance ubiquitous computing paradigms.

As we become familiar with the idea of connecting PDAs, notebook PCs and wall-sized screens, as put forward in [1], ubiquitous computing in everyday environments creates yet new challenges for mobile ad-hoc networking. When looking at less powerful mobile and stationary devices that act as sensors or actors, new requirements for communication evolve.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses advanced computational models that can generate coherent and high-quality content when prompted such as text, images, videos, tunes and codes, by leveraging the patterns and structures present in the data they have been trained with. Popular examples of commercial tools using such models are ChatGPT (text-to-text), Midjourney (text-to-image) and Vizcom (image-to-image). Current use cases are largely developed for general or professional use purposes, which are not suitable for child users due to unregulated content, lack of child-friendly use cases or age-appropriate interaction modalities. Therefore, we propose tangible user interfaces (TUIs) as a potentially suitable approach that bridges the physical and digital world by utilising physical interaction to engage with computers. Interaction with TUIs involves physically manipulating technologically augmented objects to control the digital output. Compared to graphical user interface (GUI) which relies on indirect manipulation via “windows, icons, menus, pointer” (WIMP), TUIs provide direct manipulation, hence are more straightforward. For these reasons, TUIs are considered developmentally appropriate for preschool children, who seek concrete interactions due to still-emerging abstract thinking and fine motor skills. This paper presents a case study, a six-week design project carried out in an undergraduate industrial design programme, during which students were expected to design tangibles to create child-friendly digital content. Throughout the project, students developed TUIs for prompting generative AI to create interactive experiences that are developmentally appropriate and engaging for preschool children. The outputs were conceptual designs that made use of TUIs for media generation such as composing songs, writing stories, creating artwork and virtual environments. In this paper, we present the educational frame and sample conceptual design outputs. We discuss potential design strategies to consider while developing child-friendly human-AI interactions, such as customisation scenarios, parental roles, and balancing physical and digital interactions. Our work contributes to the user-centred development of future technologies that offer meaningful, engaging and safe experiences for children.

The advent of techniques in pervasive computing has affected human life that freely uses Internet environment, and advances in ubiquitous networks, telecommunications, and information technology, along with the proliferation of multimedia smart devices—such as laptops, iPods, personal digital assistants (PDA), and cellular telephones—have stimulated the development of intelligent pervasive multimedia applications. These key technologies are creating a multimedia revolution that will have significant impact across a wide spectrum to consumer, business, healthcare, and governmental domains. Yet, many challenges remain, especially when it comes to efficiently indexing, mining, querying, searching, and retrieving multimedia data. This special issue attempts to offer an open discussion in the realm of pervasive multimedia computing, including efficient delivery and distribution of multimedia content, applications, and services over the wired and wireless networks as well as multimedia QoS support for such networks. This issue also interests in looking at service architectures, protocols, and standards for multimedia communications along with the related security issues, such as secure multimedia information sharing. Finally, this issue expects to explore works on novel applications Multimed Tools Appl (2016) 75:14015–14017 DOI 10.1007/s11042-016-3826-z

We present a tangible user interface based upon mediaBlocks: small, electronically tagged wooden blocks that serve as physical icons (“phicons”) for the containment, transport, and manipulation of online media. MediaBlocks interface with media input and output devices such as video cameras and projectors, allowing digital media to be rapidly “copied” from a media source and “pasted” into a media display. MediaBlocks are also compatible with traditional GUIs, providing seamless gateways between tangible and graphical interfaces. Finally, mediaBlocks act as physical “controls” in tangible interfaces for tasks such as s equencing collections of media elements. CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.5.2 [User Interfaces] Input devices and strategies; H.5.1 [Multimedia Information Systems] Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities Additional Keywords: tangible user interface, tangible bits, phicons, physical constraints, ubiquitous compu ting

Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) integrate computer systems with the physical world as they allow interaction through physical objects and the human kinesthetic system. They have been studied in various domains, both by the designing and piloting of innovative applications, as well as by comparatively analyzing TUI against GUI interaction. In the human-robot interaction (HRI) field, TUIs are considered a promising approach as they make effective use of physical object affordances, but research is rather inconclusive about whether TUIs offer improved efficiency, lower error rates, increased intuitiveness, engagement, and user satisfaction. In this study, two prototype UIs were designed and evaluated to compare a TUI with a 2D mouse-based UI for remotely operating two agricultural robots used for vineyard spraying. Two different user groups played the role of the operator: computer experts and farmers leading to an experiment with a 2×2 setup, where two different types of UIs were evaluated by two different user groups. The formulated research questions concern the efficiency, accuracy, and user evaluation for each UI and for each group individually and combined. Analysis has shown that there were no statistically significant differences comparing the alternative UIs for each group in terms of time to complete the task, even though computers experts were faster, as expected. Also, the number of collisions, as well as the percentage of unsprayed and double sprayed area, revealed no significant differences, either for user groups or UIs. The TUI received more positive evaluations in terms of user preference, and users reported lower perceived error rates, especially in the case of farmers, who were also more willing to use the TUI in their daily job.

Wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi), handheld devices are communicating more frequently with conventional computers in offices, meeting rooms, classrooms, and homes. The smart homes of the future will have ubiquitous embedded computation, and an increasing number of appliances can already communicate wirelessly. The authors launched the Pebbles project to determine whether a handheld device, such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) or cell phone, could serve as a simpler, more effective remote control. Office-centered applications include using the PDA instead of a laser pointer, using a PDA to remotely control a PowerPoint presentation, and using a PDA with the nondominant hand to scroll windows on a PC. In the home, we are exploring how to use the PDA as a customizable, intelligent personal universal controller (PUC) for appliances, creating high-quality control panels on the handheld using a high-level specification of the appliance's capabilities. We are also interested in how PDAs can assist in providing both appliance and computer access for the disabled, including the development of new text entry methods for the motor-impaired user.

Wireless sensor networks and Radio Frequency Identifiers are becoming mainstream applications of ubiquitous computing. They are slowly being integrated into our infrastructure and therefore must incorporate a certain level of security. However, both applications are severely resource constrained. Energy scavenger powered sensor nodes and current RFID tags provide only 20 μ W to 50 μ W of power to the digital component of their circuits. This makes complex cryptography a luxury. In this paper we present a novel ultra-low power SHA-1 design and an energy efficient ultra-low power AES design. Both consume less than 30 μ W of power and can therefore be used to provide the basic security services of encryption and authentication. Furthermore, we analyze their energy consumption based on the TinySec protocol and come to the somewhat surprising result, that SHA-1 based authentication and encryption is more energy efficient than using AES for payload sizes of 17 bytes or larger.

Portable electronic communication devices can be used for many purposes and they are capable of integrating with ubiquitous computing (UC) infrastructures to carry on mobile multimedia communications. As those devices become prevalent, they incur potential network security threatening to organizations. Nowadays, the Skype is the most popular P2P VoIP application program, which is being used by millions of global users to place IP phone calls, transfer files, or communicate via instant messaging (IM). This phenomenon already generates imminent network security issues that are indispensable to digital forensics researchers or the law enforcement agencies worldwide. Cellular phones, smart phones, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are the representative ones of those devices and there are some open sources or commercial software toolkits that can be utilized to proceed the forensics investigation concerning the electronic crimes in next generation communications (NGCs). A case review was conducted to illustrate the hidden digital trails within the PDA from the Registry of the Windows Mobile and volatile data in the RAM to discover the possible network security leakage scenarios that resulted in the vandalism of intangible digital assets of the organization. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

During this decade, pixels have become mobile. Cell phones, PDAs, handheld gaming consoles and other similar devices start to have color displays by standard and color displays are hungry for high-quality graphics. QVGA and VGA display resolutions are common, requiring dedicated hardware for graphics acceleration. Color displays and open platforms also invite games and other applications, which build on the availability of robust graphics. Handheld graphics acceleration is close to its desktop and games console counterparts Ű with content running on an embedded version of OpenGL, the OpenGL ES 2.0, vertex and pixel shaders are a requirement. Floating-point accuracy, lots of texture surfaces, plenty of performance Ű handheld pixels are of good quality and there are lots of them. Handheld gaming drives the handheld 3D graphics performance, but unlike on desktops, vector graphics hardware acceleration will become an even widely spread requirement on new handheld platforms. Applications such as the device's main graphical user interface and interactive maps are driving these requirements. In addition to performance, a strong driver for vector graphics on handhelds is image quality.The first handheld devices, including cell phones, with dedicated 3D graphics accelerators have already hit the market. By 2010, a large number of new cell phones and PDAs will be enabled with hardware vector- and 3D graphics acceleration. The volume of graphics acceleration enabled silicon chips shipping for handheld devices is expected to be significantly higher than for desktop PCs and gaming consoles. This creates a lucrative platform for game and application developers who want to develop handheld content with high-quality graphics.As there are numerous different handheld devices, the industry is fighting against fragmentation Ű widely adopted platforms must be created to enable universal content development across a wide range of platforms and end devices Ű the platform race is already on.All in all, the industry is busy creating all the essential components to bring high-quality programmable pixels to handheld devices. Content developers are already up-to speed to provide winning content for these devices. All in all, the future of handheld pixels looks rosy!

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) – although developed in research laboratories in the late 1970s – is still the dominant interaction paradigm in Information Visualization. We propose a new interaction paradigm called Blended Interaction. It combines ideas of Embodied Cognition, Multimodal Interaction, Reality-Based Interaction & Ubiquitous Computing. This is intended to stress that a single increase in the reality aspect of the interaction cannot go far enough. The particular challenge – and from the user's standpoint, the key advantage – lies in a meaningful marriage between the tested real-world options and the digital world. As a minimum this marriage must exist on the levels of the interaction, communication, of the way we solve problems with conventional tools (workflows), and of the design of the space or the architecture of buildings and places. The digital world often offers entirely new possibilities and takes the form of interactive devices of various shapes but also of intelligent everyday objects (e.g. the 'Internet of things'). In our view, interaction concepts can indeed offer a new quality of interaction, but only when the design of the interaction includes all these domains at the same time and with equal weighting. We test the suitability of our ideas of Blended Interaction concepts by using specific application examples that are being worked on as part of current research projects. Our experiences show that this new interaction paradigm has also great potential for interacting with visualization. For example, we have developed multi-touch scatter plots & facet maps for tangible user interfaces supporting the searching & browsing in Digital Libraries. We have embedded different visualizations into a Zoomable Object-oriented Information Landscape (ZOIL), which supports our vision of using visualizations on different displays of different size at the same time. We have developed specific kind of search tokens that supports collaborative search activities. For example, we try to address the following research questions: * How can future interactive InfoVis tools look like, especially in the light of the idea Blended Interaction? * How can future interactive InfoVis tools benefit from Multi-Displays & Multimodal environments used by Multiple Users? * What are the specific design requirements for multi-touch visualizations? * How can we support the collaborative use visualization tools?

The aim of the study is to investigate how Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) and Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) affect the creative design process in design education through cognitive load. A simple design problem was introduced to 30 design students in two groups. One group was provided with a TUI that was operationalized through a Desktop Augmented Reality Environment (AR) the other group was provided with a GUI that was operationalized through a Desktop Virtual Reality Environment (VR). After using the two systems the cognitive load of each interface was measure through the NASA TLX tool. Theories from cognitive psychology, information sciences, and design cognition were combined to provide an explanatory mechanism of how these media types affect the design process. The results indicate that epistemic action in TUI's such as AR interfaces reduces cognitive load thereby reducing fixation in the design process and enhancing the creative design process.

New ways to interact with technology are gaining ground over the familiar Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). The Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) are one example of this. However, while it may seem intuitive that such interfaces should evoke rather positive responses from users – e.g. feelings associated with pleasure – little has been studied in this sense. In this challenge of understanding the feelings that GUI and TUI have the potential to evoke, we present our findings from a research that involved more than a hundred people. The research question that guided our endeavors was: What are the relations between the feelings of joy, motivation and comfort when using TUI and GUI? We analyze the results and discuss some hypotheses to explain the behavior observed.

NFC-based Tangible User Interface for Information Curation and Its Application to Analogy Game

Today, the utilization of communication devices is being increased including information terminals, cell phones, handheld personal digital assistants (PDA) caused by the development of information and communication technology. The development of information and services is speeding up, whereas most communication devices have provided a inefficient hierarchical menu and sequential searching structure. In this study, the Adaptive User Interface is applied to the Bus Information Terminal(BIT) which is one of communication equipment installed in the bus stop. It will be based on analysis of unspecified individuals' preferences and user's directly personalization in the BIT prototype. We expect the results of this study to be possible to provide users with efficient and convenient information acquisition and contribute to the development of public transport use by improving the accessibility and usability of BIT.