Matthias Gira

A modular platform for event recognition in smart homes

Ambient Assisted Living technologies try to integrate intelligent assistance-systems in elder peoples homes to maintain a high degree of independence, autonomy and dignity. To speed up the development process and to make the applications more adaptive and flexible to special user needs as well as to ensure compatibility throughout systems a common middleware with standardized interfaces is desirable. The integration of off-the-shelf sensor hardware is an important aspect to assure longterm applicability and interoperability. AIT Austrian Institute of Technology has developed a modular software platform providing services to enable independent living for elder people at home. The platform is based on state-of-the-art software development techniques like OSGi and Spring, which enable modularity and flexibility. The aspect of interoperability at the hardware level is considered by integrating standards from the two areas of medical informatics and home automation. A hardware abstraction module harmonizes data from different sensor networks in terms of a common data format. Based on sensor data, functionalities for the detection of specific events and situations in the AAL domain have been implemented using finite state machines and simple statistical methods.

AALuis, a user interface layer that brings device independence to users of AAL systems

Many ICT services older people could derive a benefit from lack of accessibility, adoptability and usability of the user interface concerning arising special needs specific for the target group. AALuis intends to develop an open User Interface Layer that facilitates a dynamically adapted, personalized interaction between an elderly user and any kind of service, with different types of input and output devices and modalities. To achieve this the AALuis User Interface Layer keeps track of changes of a variety of information models to adapt the transformation process from abstract task descriptions to a user interface and to steer the user interaction in a suitable manner. One of the main goals of AALuis is to create and exploit synergies by developing an architecture that allows the easy integration into different established AAL middleware platforms. AALuis aims to significantly contribute to the freedom of choice for end-users of services and users interfaces.

User interfaces for older adults

Needs and wishes regarding the interaction with ICT solutions change over time and vary between older adults. They depend on the users physical and mental capabilities and preferences. Thus the user interface, which is considered critical to the success or failure of an ICT product or service, should be adaptable. AALuis provides an open middleware layer to guarantee accessible and usable user interfaces for Ambient Assisted Living services. The general idea is to foster a detachment of the user interface from the service and its functionality, respectively. Furthermore an input fusion and output fission regarding I/O modalities based on the users preferences is striven for. At the heart of AALuis lays a dynamically adapted, personalized interaction between an older adult and the service, with various I/O devices. The first results of the project look promising to achieve flexibility in the creation and usage of interfaces. The chosen approach allows further developments expanding the functionalities and improving the generated user interfaces.

Interaction Model-Based User Interfaces: Two Approaches, One Goal - Comparison of Two User Interface Generation Approaches Applying Interaction Models

Nowadays, we use a variety of devices to interact with local and cloud-based systems and services. We are accustomed to utilize an esthetic, functional and well-structured user interfaces. Most of these user interfaces are designed for the broad mass following the “one fits all” strategy. Undoubtedly, such a universal design approach has some benefits, but it has also some essential limitations. Inflexibility and the lack of possibilities for personalization are just two examples for these limitations. General designed user interfaces are not able to take specific user needs and requirements into account. Model-based user interface design tackles this challenge by creating abstract models which are used as starting point for the generation of tailored user interfaces. This work targets the comparison of two different interaction modeling techniques (CTT vs. SCXML) used for the design of multimodal user interfaces. Next to the general concepts, the corresponding execution frameworks and the practical exploration results are presented. The summary of elaborated advantages and disadvantages of each approach clarifies that the CTT approach is more applicable for large and complex user interaction scenarios, whereas the SCXML approach is more suitable for lightweight and structurally simpler user interaction scenarios.

I Don’t like Gaming, It Leads to a Pressure to Perform: Older Adults Refused Gaming Elements in a Digital Home-based Physical Training Programme in Two Qualitative Studies

Background: Physical activity in older adults is an important protective factor for preventing morbidity and mortality and increases well-being and independent living. Within the so-called “Train and Win” project, a physical home training program with gamification elements based on the Microsoft Kinect sensor and an avatar will be developed. Method: Two user studies using a qualitative approach were conducted in order to guarantee a user-centered design: a focus group with 14 participants and a mock-up study with seven participants. Results: Contrary to published literature and our expectations, a majority of participants (8/14; 57%) explicitly refused gamification elements, such as competitions between the participants or motivational design inputs for process feedback. Thus, the training program should be related to the physical training experiences of the participants which were mainly sports and be “realistic” in terms of the presentation and interaction with the avatar. Both studies showed the necessity for an individually designed training, including typical non-technology aspects of a physical training. Conclusion: The results stress the importance of considering diverse attitudes, technology experiences and needs of older adults. For a high user acceptance, the training has to be individually adapted and consider more traditional non-technology training elements than gamification issues.

Automatic IO Device Selection for Ambient Environments

Active and Assisted Living (AAL) aims at providing services for elderly or disabled people in their homes using modern smart home technology and AAL software. The accessibility of user interfaces for such systems is of particular interest. This article proposes a model-based solution for selecting the best device and modality for user interactions of AAL services using the Ambient Assisted Living user interfaces (AALuis) framework. The best device and modality for a given situation depends on context information provided by the AAL system. An exemplary household was modeled as a Bayesian Network, incorporating a selection of devices and their modalities, together with relevant context information regarding the user and the environment. Each entity of the network is assigned with a probability. For devices and modalities these probabilities represent a measure of their suitability for output for the user, given the context. This model was then used to simulate different scenarios, in order to review the results of this selection mechanism.

Interaction Modeling in PRACTICE - CTT Vs. SCXML - A Comparison of Two Practical Solutions Applying Interaction Modeling Techniques for Multimodal User-System Interaction

Nowadays, we are surrounded by various devices to interact with digital media and services. Each device and its inand output modalities can support users’ abilities differently. Thus, it is important to cover a wide range of interaction devices. Modeling user interaction instead of modeling single user interfaces customized to the device is a starting point to do so. This work targets the comparison of two different user interaction modeling techniques used for the design of multimodal user interfaces. Next to the general concepts of the two interaction modeling techniques, the corresponding execution frameworks and the practical exploration results are presented. This paper summarizes advantages and disadvantages of each approach and the comparison clarifies that the CTT approach applied in AALuis is more applicable for large and complex user interaction scenarios. The SCXML approach applied in the ibi project is more suitable for lightweight and structurally simpler user interaction scenarios.

A Practical Solution for the Automatic Generation of User Interfaces --- What Are the Benefits of a Practical Solution for the Automatic Generation of User Interfaces?

Older adults benefit from information and communication technology solutions in the Ambient Assisted Living AAL domain. The offered user interfaces for these ICT solutions often do not take the special needs, preferences and the physical and mental capabilities of older adults into account. The project AALuis focuses on solutions to increase accessibility, adaptability and usability of user interfaces in the AAL domain. The paper describes the functionality of the AALuis layer and the different steps involved stakeholders have to cover to benefit from the user interface generation framework. A detailed comparison between the traditional user interface design and the AALuis approach lists similarities and identifies differences in the user interface generation process.