Designing inclusive interfaces through user modeling and simulation

Elderly and disabled people can be hugely benefited through the advancement of modern electronic devices, as those can help them to engage more fully with the world. However, existing design practices often isolate elderly or disabled users by considering them as users with special needs. This article presents a simulator that can reflect problems faced by elderly and disabled users while they use computer, television, and similar electronic devices. The simulator embodies both the internal state of an application and the perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes of its user. It can help interface designers to understand, visualize, and measure the effect of impairment on interaction with an interface. Initially a brief survey of different user modeling techniques is presented, and then the existing models are classified into different categories. In the context of existing modeling approaches the work on user modeling is presented for people with a wide range of abilities. A few applications of the simulator, which shows the predictions are accurate enough to make design choices and point out the implication and limitations of the work, are also discussed. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

A survey on technology exposure and range of abilities of elderly and disabled users in India

This paper reports a survey on people with age-related and physical impairments in India. The survey evaluates functional parameters related to human computer interaction and reports subjective attitude and exposure of users towards technology. We found a significant cognitive decline in elderly users while their functional parameters are sufficient to use existing electronic devices. However young disabled users are found to be experienced with computer but could not have access to appropriate assistive devices, which would benefit them. Most users used desktop computers and mobile phone but none used tablet, smartphone or kiosks though they are keen to learn new technologies. Overall we hope that our results will be useful for HCI practitioners in developing countries. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

使用概率规则文法评估人机界面可用性

提出一种在界面系统设计规约的基础上使用的可用性评估方法.首先使用有限状态自动机抽象界面系统设计,根据概率规则文法对有限状态自动机的状态转换概率进行预测;然后结合用户的熟练程度提出了界面可用性评估算法;最后讨论了一个手机界面的可用性计算实例.文中方法能够在界面系统生命周期的早期使用,以较早地对不同设计方案进行比较,降低开发风险.

虚拟现实人机交互的eGOMS模型研究

采用心理学和计算机技术相交叉的研究方法,对人机交互中人的认知过程的人类视知觉特征和心理加工机制与特点等进行了细致的探讨;结合虚拟环境中人机交互过程的不确定性、连续性和实时反馈性以及交互可用性评价指标的多样性等特点,提出了适用于虚拟现实人机交互的扩展GOMS(eGOMS)模型,克服了传统GOMS模型要求精确的用户操作、交互界面与实际应用相分离及评价指标单一的不足.以eGOMS模型为基础对PIBG交互范式进行了评估,PIBG为VR用户界面提供自然、隐式交互的手段,从而大大降低了用户在虚拟环境下交互的认知负荷.

自然交互研究——笔式简谱编辑器的设计与实现

自然交互是指用户可以用自己熟悉的日常技能与计算机进行交互。中国有大量的音乐爱好者使用简谱,但是针对简谱编辑的编辑软件却相对较少,并且现有软件的交互方式不够自然,降低了用户对软件的使用效率。他们需要一种更自然、更方便使用的简谱编辑软件。该文介绍了一个基于笔式输入的简谱编辑器原型系统的设计和实现。基于对现有软件、简谱特性和可利用的新技术的综合分析,设计并实现了这个原型系统。对此原型系统进行了非正式的用户实验之后,对结果进行了分析,并提出了修改的方案。

construction of feature-matching perception in virtual assembly

An important characteristic of virtual assembly is interaction. Traditional di-rect manipulation in virtual assembly relies on dynamic collision detection, which is very time-consuming and even impossible in desktop virtual assembly environment. Feature-matching isa critical process in harmonious virtual assembly, and is the premise of assembly constraint sens-ing. This paper puts forward an active object-based feature-matching perception mechanism and afeature-matching interactive computing process, both of which make the direct manipulation in vir-tual assembly break away from collision detection. They also help to enhance virtual environmentunderstandability of user intention and promote interaction performance. Experimental resultsshow that this perception mechanism can ensure that users achieve real-time direct manipulationin desktop virtual environment.

Color to Gray: Visual Cue Preservation

Both commercial and scientific applications often need to transform color images into gray-scale images, e. g., to reduce the publication cost in printing color images or to help color blind people see visual cues of color images. However, conventional color to gray algorithms are not ready for practical applications because they encounter the following problems: 1) Visual cues are not well defined so it is unclear how to preserve important cues in the transformed gray-scale images; 2) some algorithms have extremely high time cost for computation; and 3) some require human-computer interactions to have a reasonable transformation. To solve or at least reduce these problems, we propose a new algorithm based on a probabilistic graphical model with the assumption that the image is defined over a Markov random field. Thus, color to gray procedure can be regarded as a labeling process to preserve the newly well-defined visual cues of a color image in the transformed gray-scale image. Visual cues are measurements that can be extracted from a color image by a perceiver. They indicate the state of some properties of the image that the perceiver is interested in perceiving. Different people may perceive different cues from the same color image and three cues are defined in this paper, namely, color spatial consistency, image structure information, and color channel perception priority. We cast color to gray as a visual cue preservation procedure based on a probabilistic graphical model and optimize the model based on an integral minimization problem. We apply the new algorithm to both natural color images and artificial pictures, and demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms representative conventional algorithms in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. In addition, it requires no human-computer interactions.

Image Ratio Features for Facial Expression Recognition Application

Video-based facial expression recognition is a challenging problem in computer vision and human-computer interaction. To target this problem, texture features have been extracted and widely used, because they can capture image intensity changes raised by skin deformation. However, existing texture features encounter problems with albedo and lighting variations. To solve both problems, we propose a new texture feature called image ratio features. Compared with previously proposed texture features, e. g., high gradient component features, image ratio features are more robust to albedo and lighting variations. In addition, to further improve facial expression recognition accuracy based on image ratio features, we combine image ratio features with facial animation parameters (FAPs), which describe the geometric motions of facial feature points. The performance evaluation is based on the Carnegie Mellon University Cohn-Kanade database, our own database, and the Japanese Female Facial Expression database. Experimental results show that the proposed image ratio feature is more robust to albedo and lighting variations, and the combination of image ratio features and FAPs outperforms each feature alone. In addition, we study asymmetric facial expressions based on our own facial expression database and demonstrate the superior performance of our combined expression recognition system.

A Relay Level Set Method for Automatic Image Segmentation

This paper presents a new image segmentation method that applies an edge-based level set method in a relay fashion. The proposed method segments an image in a series of nested subregions that are automatically created by shrinking the stabilized curves in their previous subregions. The final result is obtained by combining all boundaries detected in these subregions. The proposed method has the following three advantages: 1) It can be automatically executed without human-computer interactions; 2) it applies the edge-based level set method with relay fashion to detect all boundaries; and 3) it automatically obtains a full segmentation without specifying the number of relays in advance. The comparison experiments illustrate that the proposed method performs better than the representative level set methods, and it can obtain similar or better results compared with other popular segmentation algorithms.

基于OMAP的废墟搜救机器人监控终端

针对废墟搜救机器人的实际需要和当前监控终端的不足,设计开发了一种新的监控终端。这种监控终端基于OMAP架构,包含了人机界面、遥控、无线通讯、数据处理等功能,实现了对机器人本体的无线操控,并实现了与指挥中心的远程无线连接。由于在功耗与性能之间取得了平衡,这种监控终端减小了体积,提高了便携性。