Luís Carriço

A conceptual framework for developing adaptive multimodal applications

This article presents FAME, a model-based Framework for Adaptive Multimodal Environments. FAME proposes an architecture for adaptive multimodal applications, a new way to represent adaptation rules - the behavioral matrix - and a set of guidelines to assist the design process of adaptive multimodal applications. To demonstrate FAMEs validity, the development process of an adaptive Digital Talking Book player is summarized.

Lessons from early stages design of mobile applications

This paper presents a set of lessons that resulted from the design process of several mobile applications. It starts by addressing the difficulties that emerged through the data gathering, prototyping and evaluation stages also stressing the absence of adequate techniques and methods to support these activities. We explain how these problems and challenges were solved and how they can be applied in other domains and future projects. As a result, we provide a set of guidelines for designers to apply on the development and design of mobile applications and user interfaces. The paper also addresses three case studies in which these guidelines and procedures were validated, stressing their contributions and results.

A mixed-fidelity prototyping tool for mobile devices

In this paper we present a software framework which supports the construction of mixed-fidelity (from sketch-based to software) prototypes for mobile devices. The framework is available for desktop computers and mobile devices (e.g., PDAs, Smartphones). It operates with low-fidelity sketch based prototypes or mid to high-fidelity prototypes with some range of functionality, providing several dimensions of customization (e.g., visual components, audio/video files, navigation, behavior) and targeting specific usability concerns. Furthermore, it allows designers and users to test the prototypes on actual devices, gathering usage information, both passively (e.g., logging) and actively (e.g., questionnaires/Experience Sampling). Overall, it conveys common prototyping procedures with effective data gathering methods that can be used on ubiquitous scenarios supporting in-situ prototyping and participatory design on-the-go. We address the frameworks features and its contributions to the design and evaluation of applications for mobile devices and the field of mobile interaction design, presenting real-life case studies and results.

Web not for all: a large scale study of web accessibility

The Web accessibility discipline strives for the study and improvement of front-end Web design towards people with disabilities. Best practices such as WCAG dictate how Web pages should be created accordingly. On top of WCAG, several evaluation procedures enable the measurement of the quality level of a Web page. We leverage these procedures in an automated evaluation of a nearly 30 million Web page collection provided by the Portuguese Web Archive. Our study shows that there is high variability regarding the accessibility level of Web pages, and that few pages reach high accessibility levels. The obtained results show that there is a correlation between accessibility and complexity (i.e., number of HTML elements) of a Web page. We have also verified the effect of the interpretation of evaluation warnings towards the perception of accessibility.

Low-fi prototyping for mobile devices

This paper introduces a set of concepts for user-centered design methodologies that apply to mobile and multi-device applications. It ranges from initial data gathering and specification processes to the creation of low-fidelity prototypes and their evaluation. The focus is given to usability issues of ubiquitous, context and ambient intelligent applications. The papers main contributions are (1) the description of our findings on how to engage on the early stage prototyping process, involving mobility; (2) a set of details that need to be taken into consideration so that the design and prototyping process is successful; (3) a set of guidelines on how to evaluate mobile applications on their context of use at an early design stage and (4) a rapid prototyping framework which allows designers to quickly move from their hand-drawn sketches to semi-functional software prototypes, particularly for PDAs and Smart phones.

An end-user approach to business process modeling

This paper discusses the main differences between humanistic and mechanistic business process modeling. While the mechanistic approach requires strict process formalization, emphasizes technical details, and constrains the modeling task to technology experts, the humanistic approach is more centered on the end-user. We developed a modeling approach and a collaborative tool supporting end-user business process modeling. Design storyboards were adopted as a paradigm for knowledge representation and visual composition. The main contributions from this research include the knowledge representation structure and a collaborative tool supporting visual composition of business process models.

On web accessibility evaluation environments

Modern Web sites leverage several techniques (e.g. DOM manipulation) that allow for the injection of new content into their Web pages (e.g., AJAX), as well as manipulation of the HTML DOM tree. This has the consequence that the Web pages that are presented to users (i.e., browser environment) are different from the original structure and content that is transmitted through HTTP communication (i.e., command line environment). This poses a series of challenges for Web accessibility evaluation, especially on automated evaluation software. This paper details an experimental study designed to understand the differences posed by accessibility evaluation in the Web browser. For that, we implemented a Javascript-based evaluator, QualWeb, that can perform WCAG 2.0 based accessibility evaluations in both browser and command line environments. Our study shows that, in fact, there are deep differences between the HTML DOM tree in both environments, which has the consequence of having distinct evaluation results. Furthermore, we discovered that, for the WCAG 2.0 success criteria evaluation procedures we implemented, 67% of them yield false negative answers on their applicability within the command line environment, whereas more than 13% of them are false positives. We discuss the impact of these results in the light of the potential problems that these differences can pose to designers and developers that use accessibility evaluators that function on command line environments.

Designing and Evaluating Mobile Interaction: Challenges and Trends

Mobile technology has been rapidly gaining ground and has become intrinsic to our daily lives. As its importance within society continues to grow, features, functionalities and usage opportunities accompany such growth, turning mobile devices into essential tools. Faced with the role that mobile interactive technology has assumed, it is vital that ease of use also reaches new levels, attenuating the growing complexity within the critical status that they represent. Accordingly, mobile usability evaluation needs to re-invent itself to keep pace with this new phenomenon. This article reviews the current approaches and recent advances in the design and evaluation of mobile interaction and mobile user interfaces, addressing the challenges, the most significant results and the upcoming research directions.

On the credibility of wikipedia: an accessibility perspective

User interfaces play a critical role on the credibility of authoritative information sources on the Web. Citation and referencing mechanisms often provide the required support for the independent verifiability of facts and, consequently, influence the credibility of the conveyed information. Since the quality level of these references has to be verifiable by users without any barriers, user interfaces cannot pose problems on accessing information. This paper presents a study about the influence of accessibility of user interfaces on the credibility of Wikipedia articles. We have analysed the accessibility quality level of the articles and the external Web pages used as authoritative references. This study has shown that there is a discrepancy on the accessibility of referenced Web pages, which can compromise the overall credibility of Wikipedia. Based on these results, we have analysed the article referencing lifecycle (technologies and policies) and propose a set of improvements that can help increasing the accessibility of references within Wikipedia articles.

Handheld devices for cooperative educational activities

This paper presents a framework that aims to support several steps of learning activities. Working either on mobile and non-mobile devices, Test-IT, allows users to learn ubiquitously and to proceed with their work at any time and place. It approaches both teaching and learning activities, allowing teachers and students to cooperate using common mobile devices to transfer information between each other.We describe the requirements for using such tool on mobile devices and comment some of the current approaches. The design process and the frameworks components, focusing particularly on the user interface and usability issues, are addressed.We also focus on the flexibility provided by Test-IT, allowing users to create specific applications, according to their field or subject of expertise.