Pedro F. Campos

CanonSketch: a user-centered tool for canonical abstract prototyping

In this paper, we argue that current user interface modeling tools are developed using a formalism-centric approach that does not support the needs of modern software development. In order to solve this problem we need both usable and expressive notations and tools that enable the creation of user-interface specifications that leverage the design and thought process. In this paper we present the CanonSketch tool. CanonSketch supports a new UI specification language – Canonical Abstract Prototypes (CAP) – that bridges the gap between envisioned user behavior and the concrete user interface. The tool also supports two additional and synchronized views of the UI: the Wisdom UML presentation extension and concrete HTML user interfaces. In this way the tool seamlessly supports designers while switching from high level abstract views of the UI and low-level concrete realizations.

Practitioner Tools and Workstyles for User-Interface Design

Many studies have analyzed general software development practices and how organizations can better support them. However, literature that qualitatively studies user-interface-related work practices in software development is relatively rare. Supporting workstyle transitions in UI practices is nonetheless important. A survey of 370 practitioners about their workstyles and tool use offers concrete examples of design tools that support the most important workstyle transitions. The survey also resulted in recommendations for making design tools more human-centric and appealing to practitioners interested in the UI aspects of software development

Atmos: a hybrid crowdsourcing approach to weather estimation

Motivated by the novel paradigm of participatory sensing in collecting in situ automated data and human input we introduce the Atmos platform. Atmos leverages a crowd-sourcing network of mobile devices for the collection of in situ weather related sensory data, provided by available on-board sensors, along with human input, to generate highly localized information about current and future weather conditions. In this paper, we share our first insights of an 8-month long deployment of Atmos mobile app on Google Play that gathered data from a total of 9 countries across 3 continents. Furthermore, we describe the underlying system infrastructure and showcase how a hybrid people-centric and environment-centric approach to weather estimation could benefit forecasting. Finally, we present our preliminary results originating from questionnaires inquiring into how people perceive the weather, how they use technology to know about the weather and how it affects their habits.

Towards useful and usable interaction design tools: CanonSketch

Despite all the effort dedicated to bringing better User-Centered Design (UCD) tools to market, current studies show that the industry is still dominated by tools that do not support the activities and workstyles of designers. Also, there is a growing need for interaction design tools aimed at software engineers, a problem related to bringing usability into the software engineering processes. We propose a new workstyle model that can be effectively used to envision, design and evaluate a new generation of innovative interaction and software design tools, aimed at integrating usability and software engineering. We illustrate the effectiveness of our model by describing a new tool, called CanonSketch, that was built in order to support UCD in terms of the dimensions in our workstyle model. We also describe an evaluation study aimed at contrasting paper prototyping with our tool as well as the level of workstyle support.

Principles and Practice of Work Style Modeling: Sketching Design Tools

In our research, we have been combining Work Style modeling with the well-established principles of Usage-Centered Design having the objective of designing and evaluating better design tools. Our approach distinguishes itself from the fact that it combines work style quantitative data (easily obtained through logging tools) with qualitative data that predicts a given tool’s level of acceptance. We describe a set of principles that were proven successful during this design process, illustrate sketches of the tools, and highlight the relevant design aspects that worked and those that didn’t work.

Galactic dimensions: a unifying workstyle model for user-centered design

This paper describes a new unifying workstyle model for the user-centered design process, comprised of eight dimensions that we claim as fundamental to supporting the UCD process. Our proposal is new because it is the first workstyle model tailored to UCD. We also show the usefulness of workstyle modeling when evaluating the stage/effort of a project at a given time. Our workstyle model was based on the identification of the main obstacles to UCD and SE integration, current research results and extensive observation of HCI students involved in UCD projects. Though simple, it models the designer’s behavior and can be effectively and easily used to (a) choose adequate tool support for a given phase of a project and (b) drive the development of new UCD tools.

You're the Voice: Evaluating User Interfaces for Encouraging Underserved Youths to express themselves through Creative Writing

Minority groups are the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. In addition, the poverty level in the U.S. is the highest it has been in the last 50 years. We argue that the community needs more research addressing this user segment, and we present a novel study about how underserved youths react when presented with different UI designs aimed at promoting creative writing. The act of creative writing per se can become the driver of change among underserved teenagers, and researchers should strive to discover novel UI designs that can effectively increase this target groups productivity, creativity and mental well-being. Using MS Word as baseline, our contribution analyzes the influence of a Zen-like tool (designed by the authors and called Haven), a nostalgic but realistic typewriting tool (Hanx Writer), and a stress-based tool that eliminates writers block by providing consequences for procrastination (Write or Die). Our results suggest that the Zen characteristics of our tool Haven were capable of conveying a sense of calm and concentration to the users, making them feel better and also write more. The nostalgic Hanx typewriter also fared very well with regard to mental well-being and productivity, as measured by average number of words written. Contrary to our initial expectations, the stress-based UI (Write or Die) had the lowest productivity levels.

Collaboration Meets Interactive Surfaces: Walls, Tables, Tablets, and Phones (CMIS)

This workshop proposes to bring together researchers who are interested in improving collaborative experiences through the use of multi-sized interaction surfaces, ranging from large-scale walls, to tables, tablets and phones. The opportunities for innovation exist, but the tabletop community has not still completely addressed the problem of bringing effective collaboration activities using multiple interactive surfaces, especially in complex work domains. Of particular interest is the potential synergy that one can obtain by effectively combining different-sized surfaces.

A UML-based tool for designing user interfaces

Existing software modeling tools are widely recognized to be hard to use and, hence, to adopt. We believe those usability problems are related to a legacy of formalism-centric tools that don’t promote the new challenges of modern software development. In this short paper, we briefly describe a new tool, under development, that tries to promote usability in modeling tools to support collaborative development of interactive software. It focuses on usable, real-world languages and a developer-centered design.

Combining eeg data with place and plausibility responses as an approach to measuring presence in outdoor virtual environments

Outdoor virtual environments (OVEs) are becoming increasingly popular, as they allow a sense of presence in places that are inaccessible or protected from human intervention. These virtual environments (VEs) need to address physical modalities other than vision and hearing. We analyze the influence of four different physical modalities (vision, hearing, haptics, and olfaction) on the sense of presence on a virtual journey through the sea and the Laurissilva Forest of Funchal, Portugal. We applied Slater et al.s (2010) method together with data gathered by the Emotiv EPOC EEG in an OVE setting. In such a setting, the combination of haptics and hearing are more important than the typical virtual environment (vision and hearing) in terms of place and plausibility illusions. Our analysis is particularly important for designers interested in crafting similar VEs because we classify different physical modalities according to their importance in enhancing presence.