Rémi Bastide

Engineering Human Computer Interaction and Interactive Systems

Usability.- Bringing Usability Concerns to the Design of Software Architecture.- Empirical Usability Testing in a Component-Based Environment: Improving Test Efficiency with Component-Specific Usability Measures.- Software Architecture Analysis of Usability.- Task Modelling.- Support for Task Modeling - A Constructive Exploration.- DynaMo-AID: A Design Process and a Runtime Architecture for Dynamic Model-Based User Interface Development.- Using Task Modelling Concepts for Achieving Adaptive Workflows.- Browsing and Searching.- Mixing Research Methods in HCI: Ethnography Meets Experimentation in Image Browser Design.- Tell Me a Story Issues on the Design of Document Retrieval Systems.- Model-Based Approaches.- CanonSketch: A User-Centered Tool for Canonical Abstract Prototyping.- Finding Iteration Patterns in Dynamic Web Page Authoring.- Very-High-Fidelity Prototyping for Both Presentation and Dialogue Parts of Multimodal Interactive Systems.- USIXML: A Language Supporting Multi-path Development of User Interfaces.- A Novel Dialog Model for the Design of Multimodal User Interfaces.- Navigation Patterns - Pattern Systems Based on Structural Mappings.- Ubiquitous Computing.- Spatial Control of Interactive Surfaces in an Augmented Environment.- Manipulating Vibro-Tactile Sequences on Mobile PC.- Bridging Viewpoints.- Formalising an Understanding of User-System Misfits.- Supporting a Shared Understanding of Communication-Oriented Concerns in Human-Computer Interaction: A Lexicon-Based Approach.- A Seamless Development Process of Adaptive User Interfaces Explicitly Based on Usability Properties.- Plastic and Adaptive Interfaces.- More Principled Design of Pervasive Computing Systems.- Towards a New Generation of Widgets for Supporting Software Plasticity: The Comet.- Using Interaction Style to Match the Ubiquitous User Interface to the Device-to-Hand.- Supporting Flexible Development of Multi-device Interfaces.- Groupware.- The Software Design Board: A Tool Supporting Workstyle Transitions in Collaborative Software Design.- Supporting Group Awareness in Distributed Software Development.

A formal description of multimodal interaction techniques for immersive virtual reality applications

Nowadays, designers of Virtual Reality (VR) applications are faced with the choice of a large number of different input and output devices leading to a growing number of interaction techniques. Usually VR interaction techniques are described informally, based on the actions users can perform within the VR environment. At implementation time, such informal descriptions (made at design time) yield to ambiguous interpretations by the developers. In addition, informal descriptions make it difficult to foresee the impact throughout the application of a modification of the interaction techniques. This paper discusses the advantages of using a formal description technique (called ICO) to model interaction techniques and dialogues for VR applications. This notation is presented via a case study featuring an immersive VR application. The case study is then used to show, through analysis of models, how the formal notation can help to ensure the usability, reliability and efficiency of virtual reality systems.

Petri Net Based Design of User-Driven Interfaces Using the Interactive Cooperative Objects Formalism

The research work presented here belongs in the domain of formal specification of human-software interaction. More precisely, we are concerned by the applying a formal specification technique in the various stages of the construction of an user-driven application, the kind supported by most of the current UIMS. We use the Interactive Cooperative Objects (ICO) formalism, in which structural (or static) aspects are described in an object-oriented framework and dynamic (or behavioral) aspects are described with high-level Petri-nets. The formalism, a case study and some of its expected benefits are presented here.

An approach integrating two complementary model-based environments for the construction of multimodal interactive applications

This paper presents a tool suite for the engineering of multimodal Post-WIMP Interactive Systems. The work presented here extends previous work done on design, prototyping, specification and verification of interactive systems and integrates two previously unrelated approaches. The first element of this integration is ICoM (a data-flow model dedicated to low-level input modelling) and its environment ICon which allows for editing and simulating ICoM models. The other element is ICOs (a formal description technique mainly dedicated to dialogue modelling) and its environment PetShop, which allows for editing, simulating and verifying ICOs models. This paper shows how these two approaches have been integrated and that this integration allows for engineering multimodal interactive systems. We show on a Range Slider case study how these tools can be used for prototyping interactive systems in general and multimodal interaction techniques in particular. We also present in details how the changes in the interaction techniques impact the models at various levels of the software architecture.

Task Models - System Models: a Formal Bridge over the Gap

Research in human-computer interaction abounds in various notations, formalisms and models that aim at capturing one or more aspects of a domain. One underlying problem is that various disciplines relating to HCI are complex in their own right, with no easy mechanism for transfer of results and expertise across diverse theories and models (Barnard 91, Kuuti & Bannone 1993). As HCI encompasses cpncerns ranging from human factors to software engineering and even device mechanics, it is necessary, for each of those approaches, to define a more or less crisp boundary, stating what belongs to the modelling domain, and what is exterior to it.

Very-high-fidelity prototyping for both presentation and dialogue parts of multimodal interactive systems

This paper presents a tool suite (made up of two previously unrelated approaches) for the engineering of multimodal Post-WIMP Interactive Systems. The first element of this integration is ICOM (a data-flow model dedicated to low-level input modelling) and its environment ICON which allows for editing and simulating ICOM models. The other element is ICOs (a formal description technique mainly dedicated to dialogue modelling) and its environment PetShop which allows for editing, simulating and verifying ICOs models. This paper shows how these two approaches have been integrated and how they support multimodal interactive systems engineering. We show on a classical rubber banding case study how these tools can be used for prototyping interactive systems. We also present in details how the changes in the interaction techniques impact the models at various levels of the software architecture.

Monolingual, Articulated Modeling of Users, Devices, and Interfaces

This paper presents a framework for combining the discrete models of users and devices into a global system model suitable for analysis and simulation. It views a system as a composite of interacting subsystems, and describes how those subsystems must be structured to permit compositions in which responsibility for global behavior can be appropriately ascribed. The paper presents a human-device example (wrist watch) and develops a range of task and device models. The devices and tasks are modeled by colored Petri nets partitioned to cleanly distinguish submodel component visibility and interface affordances. The formality of Petri nets allows for axiomatic validation of isolated and interacting subsystems.

Model-Based Interactive Prototyping of Highly Interactive Applications

This paper presents a case tool supporting the ICO (Interactive Cooperative Object) formalism. This formalism allows for describing, in a formal way, highly interactive applications (also called post-WIMP). The first section describes both why such user interfaces are challenging for most description techniques and the state of the art in this field. Then, we use a case study in order to recall the basic concepts of the ICO formalism and the recent extensions added in order to take into account post-WIMP interfaces’ specificities. The next section introduces PetShop a case tool supporting the edition and the execution of ICOs specifications. Lastly, we present how the underlying architecture of PetShop and the executable nature of the ICOs support efficiently iterative development of highly interactive applications through inteactive prototyping.