Leonardo Cunha de Miranda

Adjustable interactive rings for iDTV

Literature has shown that the remote control, the main artifact for interaction with the television system, is not adequate to mediate the interaction with Interactive Digital Television (iDTV). This work presents and discusses a new proposal of artifact for interaction with iDTV applications. The paper presents in details the product design and the interaction language for the new digital artifact which presupposes its use by everyone, in the widest possible extension. Additionally, we show the prototype of these new hardware devices and an evaluation with prospective end users of the solution described in this paper.

Designing Inclusive Social Networks: A Participatory Approach

The Brazilian society is characterized by vast differences with regard to socio-economics, culture as well as access to technology and knowledge. In this scenario, Information and Communication Technology, especially hypermedia systems, could benefit citizen, allowing access to knowledge, communication and collaboration. Current social networks systems were not conceived to address the challenges of an inclusive society. In this paper, we discuss some relevant design issues, elicited from a participatory approach, to the design of such systems. The exploratory design process starts with the elicitation of the different views among users, designers and developers, passes through design concepts definition and gets to a first approximation to a user interfaces design.

Gesture-Based Interaction in Domotic Environments: State of the Art and HCI Framework Inspired by the Diversity

Applications for the control and automation of residential environments (domotics) are an emerging area of study within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). One of the related challenges is to design gestural interaction with these applications. This paper explores socio-technical aspects of gestural interaction in intelligent domotic environments. An analysis of literature in the area revealed that some HCI-related aspects are treated in a restricted manner that neglects socio-technical dimensions. We propose a framework for discussing related challenges in an integrated manner, considering the dimensions people, gestural mode of interaction, and domotics. Some of these challenges are addressed by literature outside the area of domotics. Many open research questions remain, e.g. how to design gestural vocabularies that minimize ambiguity and consider cultural and social aspects. The proposed framework might contribute to answering these questions thus to designing meaningful interaction that is intuitive and easy to learn.

Prospecting a New Physical Artifact of Interaction for iDTV: Results of Participatory Practices

A literature review has indicated that the remote control, the main physical artifact of interaction with the television system, in its current form is not adequate to the interaction between users and applications of Interactive Digital Television (iDTV), especially in a scenario of diverse user profiles as found in Brazil. This paper describes participatory practices carried out with the intention of defining a new physical artifact of interaction for iDTV. Based on the results of these participatory practices and previous research results, we provide a definition of an artifact that can be adapted to diverse contexts of use.

RoboFácil: Especificação e Implementação de um Kit de Robótica para a Realidade Educacional Brasileira

Este artigo apresenta as tecnologias associadas a um kit de robotica de baixo custo com fins educacionais desenvolvido com o intuito de promover um maior acesso a esse tipo de recurso didatico nas escolas brasileiras. Para alcancarmos esse objetivo, primeiramente realizamos estudos comparativos entre os diferentes kits comercializados no mercado, focados nos custos e nos recursos de hardware e software desses produtos. Baseado nesse levantamento, que nos proporcionou um maior entendimento das necessidades de projeto e do seu aproveitamento em sala de aula, chegamos a especificacao e a implementacao de hardware e de software do kit de robotica educacional denominado RoboFacil.

Identifying Interaction Barriers in the Use of Remote Controls

The constitution of a culture mediated by the new media of Interactive Digital Television (iDTV) will depend directly on the artifact for physical interaction available to the user. This work presents the results of an experiment whose objective was to observe users’ interactions with television using the remote control, in a scenario of diversity of access to technology. Based on in loco observation of barriers related to the use of remote control in the television setting, we identified project requirements that should be considered in the design of new physical artifacts of interaction with iDTV.

Exploring adjustable interactive rings in game playing: preliminary results

In recent years new forms of interaction have been proposed by academia and industry for the contexts of use of interactive Digital Television (iDTV) and games. One of these proposals is called Adjustable Interactive Rings (AIRs), which is a technology resulting from a research project that was originally designed to be used with iDTV applications. Taking into account the design features of the physical artifact of interaction developed, it seems possible to conjecture its use in other contexts then the iDTV. In this paper, we present preliminary results of an experiment conducted with users in order to investigate the suitability of AIRs in the context of playing computer games.

A Case Study of MasterMind Chess: Comparing Mouse/Keyboard Interaction with Kinect-Based Gestural Interface

As gestural interfaces emerged as a new type of user interface, their use has been vastly explored by the entertainment industry to better immerse the player in games. Despite being mainly used in dance and sports games, little use was made of gestural interaction in more slow-paced genres, such as board games. In this work, we present a Kinect-based gestural interface for an online and multiplayer chess game and describe a case study with users with different playing skill levels. Comparing the mouse/keyboard interaction with the gesture-based interaction, the results of the activity were synthesized into lessons learned regarding general usability and design of game control mechanisms. These results could be applied to slow-paced board games like chess. Our findings indicate that gestural interfaces may not be suitable for competitive chess matches, yet it can be fun to play while using them in casual matches.

Recommendations for Gesture-Based Residential Interactive Systems Inspired by Diversity

Gestural interaction is becoming an important mode of interaction with residential systems, be it with or without using physical artifacts such as remote controls or cell phones. When constructing respective gestural vocabularies social implications need to be considered. The importance of the residential environment to users and the heterogeneity of user profiles make the theme diversity an important concern in the development of these applications. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to describe the recommendations for diversity that support the inclusive design of residential interactive systems based on gestures.

Syntactic/Semantic Formalizations and Metrics of Residential Applications Based on Gestural Interface

The development of residential applications with gestural interaction focuses often only on technological and physical aspects in the construction of its applications. The use of technologies that support gestural recognition might restrict the gestural commands of an application. We argue that an abstraction of gestural interaction is required for a more comprehensive interaction approach. In an attempt to reduce problems related to gestural interaction, in this work, we formalized gestural interaction syntactically and semantically. The syntactic formalization uses building blocks that produce a grammar of the Extended Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) type. The semantic information is described by the point of view of residential application, together with their actions or services offered in the application. Additionally, we analyze the relations and combinations of gestural interaction syntactically formalized in generating a set of metrics for evaluating qualities of interaction that are based on recommendations for residential systems, in which the entire description comes from the pre-established syntactic formalization.