Human-Computer Interaction with older people through ethnographical lenses: everyday interactions with ICT

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at the School of Computing of the University of Dundee, United Kingdom, from 2010 to 2012. This document is a scientific report of the work done, main results, publications and accomplishment of the objectives of the 2-year post-doctoral research project with reference number BP-A 00239. The project has addressed the topic of older people (60+) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which is a topic of growing social and research interest, from a Human-Computer Interaction perspective. Over a 2-year period (June 2010-June 2012), we have conducted classical ethnography of ICT use in a computer clubhouse in Scotland, addressing interaction barriers and strategies, social sharing practices in Social Network Sites, and ICT learning, and carried out rapid ethnographical studies related to geo-enabled ICT and e-government services towards supporting independent living and active ageing. The main results have provided a much deeper understanding of (i) the everyday use of Computer-Mediated Communication tools, such as video-chats and blogs, and its evolution as older people’s experience with ICT increases over time, (ii) cross-cultural aspects of ICT use in the north and south of Europe, (iii) the relevance of cognition over vision in interacting with geographical information and a wide range of ICT tools, despite common stereotypes (e.g. make things bigger), (iv) the important relationship offline-online to provide older people with socially inclusive and meaningful eservices for independent living and active ageing, (v) how older people carry out social sharing practices in the popular YouTube, (vi) their user experiences and (vii) the challenges they face in ICT learning and the strategies they use to become successful ICT learners over time. The research conducted in this project has been published in 17 papers, 4 in journals – two of which in JCR, 5 in conferences, 4 in workshops and 4 in magazines. Other public output consists of 10 invited talks and seminars.

Gene Promoter Evolution Targets the Center of the Human Protein Interaction Network

Assessing the contribution of promoters and coding sequences to gene evolution is an important step toward discovering the major genetic determinants of human evolution. Many specific examples have revealed the evolutionary importance of cis-regulatory regions. However, the relative contribution of regulatory and coding regions to the evolutionary process and whether systemic factors differentially influence their evolution remains unclear. To address these questions, we carried out an analysis at the genome scale to identify signatures of positive selection in human proximal promoters. Next, we examined whether genes with positively selected promoters (Prom+ genes) show systemic differences with respect to a set of genes with positively selected protein-coding regions (Cod+ genes). We found that the number of genes in each set was not significantly different (8.1% and 8.5%, respectively). Furthermore, a functional analysis showed that, in both cases, positive selection affects almost all biological processes and only a few genes of each group are located in enriched categories, indicating that promoters and coding regions are not evolutionarily specialized with respect to gene function. On the other hand, we show that the topology of the human protein network has a different influence on the molecular evolution of proximal promoters and coding regions. Notably, Prom+ genes have an unexpectedly high centrality when compared with a reference distribution (P = 0.008, for Eigenvalue centrality). Moreover, the frequency of Prom+ genes increases from the periphery to the center of the protein network (P = 0.02, for the logistic regression coefficient). This means that gene centrality does not constrain the evolution of proximal promoters, unlike the case with coding regions, and further indicates that the evolution of proximal promoters is more efficient in the center of the protein network than in the periphery. These results show that proximal promoters have had a systemic contribution to human evolution by increasing the participation of central genes in the evolutionary process.

Psychometric Properties of the Spanish Human System Audit Short-Scale of Transformational Leadership

The aim of this research is to examine the psychometric properties of a Spanish version of the Human System Audit transformational leadership short-scale (HSA-TFL-ES). It is based on the concept of Bass developed in 1985. The HSA-TFL is a part of the wider Human System Audit frame. We analyzed the HSA-TFL-ES in five different samples with a total number of 1,718 workers at five sectors. Exploratory Factor Analysis corroborated a single factor in all samples that accounted for 66% to 73% of variance. The internal consistency in all samples was good (α = .92 - .95). Evidence was found for the convergent validity of the HSA-TFL-ES and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. These results suggested that the HSA-TFL short-scale is a psychometrically sound measure of this construct and can be used for a combined and first overall measurement.

Towards an emotion-driven interactive music system: ridging the gaps between affect, physiology and sound generation

Report for the scientific sojourn at the Stanford University from January until June 2007. Music is well known for affecting human emotional states, yet the relationship between specific musical parameters and emotional responses is still not clear. With the advent of new human-computer interaction (HCI) technologies, it is now possible to derive emotion-related information from physiological data and use it as an input to interactive music systems. Providing such implicit musical HCI will be highly relevant for a number of applications including music therapy, diagnosis, nteractive gaming, and physiologically-based musical instruments. A key question in such physiology-based compositions is how sound synthesis parameters can be mapped to emotional states of valence and arousal. We used both verbal and heart rate responses to evaluate the affective power of five musical parameters. Our results show that a significant correlation exists between heart rate and the subjective evaluation of well-defined musical parameters. Brightness and loudness showed to be arousing parameters on subjective scale while harmonicity and even partial attenuation factor resulted in heart rate changes typically associated to valence. This demonstrates that a rational approach to designing emotion-driven music systems for our public installations and music therapy applications is possible.

Interacció Humana amb l'ordinador

Fonamentalment és un sistema que permet escollir d'entre totes les paraules introduides previament en un diccionari la paraula que es vol, el sistema anirà mostrant totes aquelles paraules del diccionari que començen per les lletres ja escrites, així l'usuari només ha de seleccionar la paraula correcta.

Estudio sobre la usabilidad de laPDA HTC TyTN

Anàlisi d'una PDA amb funcions de telefonia mòbil, en el nostre cas la HTC TyTN, valorant la seva usabilitat a l'hora de realitzar la seva configuració per a l'ús d'un servei, tant en un mode d'usuari normal com avançat. S'analitza també el sistema operatiu de què disposa (Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional).

Desarrollo de una web semántica

Amb aquest projecte es vol solucionar aquesta manca d'accés a la informació i sobretot disposar d'un sistema que relacioni "tot amb tot", és a dir, muntar un sistema únic per documentar xarxa (física) independentment de l'element que es vulgui documentar. La idea és basar el projecte de documentació en una web semàntica basada en wiki semàntica amb un motor de cerca MediaWiki.

Acting Rehearsal in Collaborative Multimodal Mixed Reality Environments

This paper presents the use of our multimodal mixed reality telecommunication system to support remote acting rehearsal. The rehearsals involved two actors, located in London and Barcelona, and a director in another location in London. This triadic audiovisual telecommunication was performed in a spatial and multimodal collaborative mixed reality environment based on the 'destination-visitor' paradigm, which we define and put into use. We detail our heterogeneous system architecture, which spans the three distributed and technologically asymmetric sites, and features a range of capture, display, and transmission technologies. The actors' and director's experience of rehearsing a scene via the system are then discussed, exploring successes and failures of this heterogeneous form of telecollaboration. Overall, the common spatial frame of reference presented by the system to all parties was highly conducive to theatrical acting and directing, allowing blocking, gross gesture, and unambiguous instruction to be issued. The relative inexpressivity of the actors' embodiments was identified as the central limitation of the telecommunication, meaning that moments relying on performing and reacting to consequential facial expression and subtle gesture were less successful.

Acting rehearsal in collaborative multimodal mixed reality environments

This paper presents the use of our multimodal mixed reality telecommunication system to support remote acting rehearsal. The rehearsals involved two actors, located in London and Barcelona, and a director in another location in London. This triadic audiovisual telecommunication was performed in a spatial and multimodal collaborative mixed reality environment based on the 'destination-visitor' paradigm, which we define and put into use. We detail our heterogeneous system architecture, which spans the three distributed and technologically asymmetric sites, and features a range of capture, display, and transmission technologies. The actors' and director's experience of rehearsing a scene via the system are then discussed, exploring successes and failures of this heterogeneous form of telecollaboration. Overall, the common spatial frame of reference presented by the system to all parties was highly conducive to theatrical acting and directing, allowing blocking, gross gesture, and unambiguous instruction to be issued. The relative inexpressivity of the actors' embodiments was identified as the central limitation of the telecommunication, meaning that moments relying on performing and reacting to consequential facial expression and subtle gesture were less successful.

Usabilitat i disseny centrat en l'usuari : Pàgina web i intranet per serveis de manteniment d'equips mèdics

L'objectiu d'aquest projecte és millorar la situació actual del servei tècnic de reparació i manteniment d'equipament mèdic de l'Hospital Verge de la Cinta i dels centres d'atenció primària de Tortosa i crear unes interfícies clares, ordenades, fàcils i intuïtives per als usuaris, ja siguin els clients o els propis empleats, i que serviran de pont de comunicació amb el servidor central de l'organització on estarà tota la seva informació. Per crear les interfícies s'utilitzarà la metodologia del disseny centrat en l'usuari (DCU) i, a través d'un prototip, s'avaluaran les tasques que han de realitzar els usuaris (clients i empleats).

Diseño centrado en el usuario y usabilidad en entorno táctil

En este trabajo se realiza un prototipo siguiendo un diseño centrado en el usuario, además se estudiaran los distintos tipos de pantallas táctiles que existen actualmente en el mercado y la forma de cómo conseguir una aplicación fácil y manejable.

Interfície de control de dades en una fàbrica

Aquest treball tracta de l'estudi i creació de la interfície d'una aplicació que reculli les dades de control generades en un procés productiu real en una petita planta de fabricació amb cinc treballadors.

Trabajo final de carrera : accesibilidad web

Evaluación manual de 10 páginas web siguiendo la pautas WCAG 1.0 y WCAG 2.0.

Evaluación de accesibilidad web en upc.edu

Evaluación de la accesibilidad Web de 10 páginas del sitio www.upc.edu siguiendo las pautas para niveles de conformidad en WCAG 1.0 y WCAG 2.0 de acuerdo a la Metodología Unificada de Evaluación Web (UWEM 1.0).