Romina Kühn

Mobility Impaired Pedestrians Are Not Cars: Requirements for the Annotation of Geographical Data

Mobility is one prerequisite for carrying out an autonomous and independent life. As mobility impaired pedestrians impose very heterogeneous requirements regarding the calculation of optimized routes and the provision of navigation instructions, currently available navigation systems do not offer sufficient support. The main drawback is due to inadequate map data which is mostly optimized for car navigation. To overcome these limitations, the technique of multimodal annotation of geographical data has been developed for which additional requirements have been gathered by conducting a survey including 88 visually impaired respondents. Within this paper, the results of the survey are presented. Requirements for multimodal annotation are derived and discussed.

Natural Voting Interactions for Collaborative Work with Mobile Devices

In collocated collaborative creativity work, such as mind mapping or other brainstorming sessions, a group of persons has to solve different tasks as well as discuss and decide on one of the various proposed solutions at the same place. Since mobile devices are increasingly used in collaborative work, these tasks also can be performed digitally. This work addresses the process of voting for one solution out of several proposals. We provide intuitive multi-device interactions for a seamless ranking and voting using multiple mobile devices. They each represent one solution to a given task. Our proposed voting interactions include turning devices and rearranging their order according to their ratings. We demonstrate the feasibility of our interactions by implementing an application prototype. They facilitate the involvement of mobile devices in collaborative work as well as the support of users during voting and ranking processes.

Improvement in environmental accessibility via volunteered geographic information: a case study

Although geo-crowdsourcing approaches provide an opportunity to collect and share environmental accessibility information for people with disabilities, it is not clear whether individuals from different user groups have similar or different behavior while contributing volunteered geographic information about environmental accessibility. In this paper, we present a case study to investigate how users (including elderly people, wheelchair users, blind and visually impaired people as well as volunteers) annotate environmental accessibility information in their journey. We found that subjects from different user groups had different behavior while annotating accessibility information and volunteers who do not have a disability are not good at spotting environmental accessibility issues. With these findings, we conclude a series of insights about how to collect collaborative environmental accessibility for designers and developers.

An interaction concept for public displays and mobile devices in public transport

Public displays increasingly find their way into public space and offer a wide range of information to the user. Currently, most of these displays just represent information without the chance to explore them or interact with them. In general, by technical enhancements in this field, more and more possibilities of interaction are given in different domains. This work presents interaction opportunities between public displays and users with mobile devices in the field of public transport. As a basis for understanding the usage and benefits of public displays it is necessary to have a closer look at different types of displays in the public domain, too.

A Prototyping and Evaluation Framework for Interactive Ubiquitous Systems

Ubiquitous systems often come with innovative design ideas and interaction concepts. To enhance and ensure the users acceptance, it is necessary to test and evaluate those ideas in early design stages. In addition, early tests also validate the feasibility of those concepts. Rapid prototyping of ubiquitous systems enables researchers and practitioners to quickly test and implement new ideas, but is also necessary in iterative system development. We introduce a framework that supports rapid prototyping and evaluation of ubiquitous interactive systems using a modular approach, incorporating different interaction modes.

Device-based interactions for anonymous voting and rating with mobile devices in collaborative scenarios

Although one advantage of collocated collaboration is to work and discuss directly, some aspects have to be treated anonymously. For example, voting for partial solutions sometimes needs to be performed anonymously to enable unbiased ratings. We provide device-based interactions for voting anonymously in collocated settings using mobile devices. Since looking at the mobile devices screen distracts users from their surrounding and whether they are unobserved or not, we propose simple interactions based on metaphors that can be performed blindly and use the devices sensors as well as the (multi-)touch display. By tapping on the fingerprint sensor or the display a given rating can be counted. Motion sensors are used to accept or reject a partial solution. To demonstrate our interactions, we implemented a prototypical application using the fingerprint sensor for rating. The proposed interactions facilitate anonymous voting and rating to ensure unbiased decisions.

Model-Based Multi-touch Gesture Interaction for Diagram Editors

Many of todays software development processes include model-driven engineering techniques. They employ domain models, i.e. formal representations of knowledge about an application domain, to enable the automatic generation of parts of a software system. Tools supporting model-driven engineering for software development today are often desktop-based single user systems. In practice though, the design of components or larger systems often still is conducted on whiteboards or flip charts. Our work focuses on interaction techniques allowing for the development of gesture-based diagram editors that support teams in establishing domain models from a given meta-model during the development process. Users or groups of users are enabled to instantiate meta-models by free-hand or pen-based sketching of components on large multi-touch screens. In contrast to previous work, the description of multi-touch gestures is derived directly from the graphical model representing the data.

A feasibility study of context-adaptive visualizations in public transport information systems

Public displays serve as an ubiquitous source of information in public space. In context of public transport information systems, they commonly advice impersonal departure and arrival timetables. Since most displayed information is very generic, users often have problems to find the specific information they need. We propose an approach for context-aware public displays to improve personalized information access according to a users language, location, time or other individual preferences. In our research we analyze how users access information concerning their personal trips in the field of public transport. We carried out a user survey to examine the requirements for adapted content on public displays, in preparation for a quantitative user study with focus on the visualization of specific content.

A Visualization Concept for Mobile Faceted Search

Nowadays, people are increasingly using their mobile devices to find different kinds of information, for example, about products, trips or latest news. Therefore, mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have become a constant companion for many users to have access to information at any time and any place. The large amount of data and information that is provided to the user by mobile devices differs in its feature set and visual representation. To ensure the success of an app and to keep the user from an information overload by presenting too much information, a wise preparation and visualization of the data is necessary. Faceted search provides an opportunity to focus on specific information by filtering. In this paper we present a general visualization concept for faceted search on mobile devices, especially on smartphones.

Model-based interactive ubiquitous systems

Ubiquitous systems today are introducing a new quality of interaction both into our lives and into software engineering. Systems become increasingly dynamic making frequent changes to system structures, distribution, and behavior necessary. Also, adaptation to new user needs and contexts as well as new modalities and communication channels make these systems differ strongly from what has been standard in the last decades. Models and model-based interaction at runtime and design-time form a promising approach for coping with the dynamics and uncertainties inherent to interactive ubiquitous systems (IUS). Hence, this workshop discusses how model-based approaches can be used to cope with challenges of IUS. It covers the range from design-time to runtime models and from interaction to software engineering, addressing the challenges of interaction with and engineering of interactive ubiquitous systems. Building on the results of MODIQUITOUS 2011 at EICS 2011, MODIQUITOUS 2012 aims at strengthening the community and allow for deeper discussions, demonstrations as well as inclusion of new developments in ubiquitous systems research.