This paper presents a gamified Virtual Reality (VR) application integrated with a second-screen Web interface to support exposure therapy for children with sensory food aversion. The system allows therapists to configure therapeutic sessions, monitor user actions in real time, and adapt the virtual environment according to the patient's responses. The Web interface records session data, including behavioral performance and, when available, biosignals such as EEG and ECG, building a historical profile for each patient. The solution was developed through a co-design process with therapists to ensure usability and alignment with therapeutic practice. Preliminary results show the system's potential to improve engagement, support therapist intervention, and enable future developments, such as the integration of real-time neurofeedback to adapt the experience based on physiological data.

Usually, therapy is a tedious process for children as it requires repetitive exercises/tasks. A known strategy to increase engagement is to deliver therapy through games. Therefore, Fanima emerged as a serious game-based diagnosis tool co-designed with therapists’ participation for phonetic-phonological assessment of speech disorders focused on the European Portuguese language. The integration with a web platform allows real-time therapist interaction to control the game based on the classification of child vocalisations in response to gameplay requests, which follows the therapeutic structure for the intended diagnosis. A preliminary user study with six speech therapists was conducted to validate the tool’s concept and usability, responding to the therapeutic requirements. The results are positive and interesting, validating the tool in the first evaluation phase and suggesting a tendency of acceptance by more therapists.

This paper presents and discusses the integration of human pose estimation techniques into an existing web-based multimodal video annotation tool, applying it to the sports context, where basketball is the first case study. The relevance of video analysis extends across many fields of work (e.g., professional sports, education). In sports, systematic, detailed analysis using videos of players and teams is vital to evaluate many aspects of both training and competition. MotionNotes annotation tool now combines human pose and motion information with existing traditional annotation mechanisms (e.g., text and drawings annotations), allowing users to add further details to their annotation work. The paper reports feedback from a pilot study based on a participatory workshop involving people with relevant competitive experience in basketball. Based on this use case feedback, we conclude with an outlook of future iterations for our video annotation tool.

Parkinson’s Disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder and physical exercise is essential in its treatment process. The use of new technologies to persuade, motivate and activate individuals for health behaviour change has been a quickly expanding field of research. This paper focuses on studying how pervasive serious games can be designed using low-cost off-the-shelf controllers and interaction devices usually used with commercial consoles for gaming. The research work has the ultimate goal of establishing how serious games based on Virtual Reality should be designed according to the impact of the technology on people with Parkinson’s Disease.

We live surrounded by computing devices, but we are not yet combining them into a natural unified user experience. Therefore, we have designed and implemented a framework to generalize and support the development of multi-device applications, which distribute their User Interfaces (UI) across co-located devices. The framework is composed of: authentication and authorization services; a broker to sync information across application instances; background services to gather the capabilities of the devices; an integration module with an indoor positioning system to determine when to associate devices. It provides a library to determine the components to be displayed based on UI requirements and the capabilities of the available devices. It also includes elements to manage the distribution of UI components and application states that can be shared to enable collaboration. We present an application prototype and a user study which assesses how multi-device applications are perceived by users. The results are very positive, indicating that we should keep working on our research since the users received very well the prototype and the concept, which also validates the support provided by the framework.

Creativity and inspiration for problem-solving are critical skills in a group-based learning environment. Communication procedures have seen continuous adjustments over the years, with increased multimedia elements usage like videos to provide superior audience impact. Annotations are a valuable approach for remembering, reflecting, reasoning, and sharing thoughts on the learning process. However, it is hard to control playback flow and add potential notes during video presentations, such as in a classroom context. Teachers often need to move around the classroom to interact with the students, which leads to situations where they are physically far from the computer. Therefore, we developed a multimodal web video annotation tool that combines a voice interaction module with manual annotation capabilities for more intelligent natural interactions towards ubiquitous environments. We observed current video annotation practices and created a new set of principles to guide our research work. Natural language enables users to express their intended actions while interacting with the web video player for annotation purposes. We have developed a customized set of natural language expressions that map the user speech to specific software operations through studying and integrating new artificial intelligence techniques. Finally, the paper presents positive results gathered from a user study conducted to evaluate our solution.

We live surrounded by the most varied computing devices, which may give us the opportunity to combine them to form a unified and richer user experience. Considering this opportunity, we created the UnaxY Framework to support the development of applications with UI components distributed by co-located devices. This paper is focused on a feasibility study based on two prototype applications created using UnaxY. We performed user studies to evaluate concepts associated to this type of applications and the framework they were based on. We had a special interest in assessing how managing the application state and collaborating across devices would be perceived and received by users. The results are positive and clearly indicate that we should continue developing solutions that support a generalized implementation of applications with the user interaction spanning multiple devices.

We currently live surrounded by many different computing devices. Therefore, it is important to take better advantage of those devices by coming up with smart ways of integrating and combining them. We have been exploring the possibility of building applications that present user interfaces pervasively distributed across different co-located devices. We designed the YanuX framework, which generalizes and supports the development of this new type of applications. A key issue is the automatic distribution of user interface (UI) components among co-located devices. We created the tools set needed to describe the capabilities of each of the devices present in the environment and the requirements of each of the applications' components as configured by the developers. Restrictions of the components should match the capabilities of the devices leading to a UI component distribution decision that should reflect developers' intentions and expectations of the users. Besides detailing YanuX's components, the paper also presents YouTube Viewer as a proof-of-concept application based on YanuX. The application was also used in a user study to evaluate the concept and the experience supported by the framework. The results presented here are positive and very promising.

Although public displays installations are easy to attract the attention of passers-by to specific content, they present an issue in targeting the right audience. We envision public displays installations working as platforms in which different interactive applications run with highly personalised content based on personal characteristics and interests of a person attending the public displays. Mobile devices can act as an important interaction tool that complements the public screen, providing a feeling of privacy, but they can also be used to get users' preferences in order to obtain their user profiles. This paper is focused on demonstrating how personalisation can be designed and applied to improve the user experience in public display systems, integrating mobile interaction to potentiate the approach. It describes a public display experiment deployed at a university campus and presents a user study composed of two phases: the system without personalisation and the system with personalisation.

We live surrounded by computing devices, but applications are mostly confined to run on a single device. It should be possible to make better use of the multiple devices around us by coming up with ways of integrating and combining them, while leveraging the specific strengths of some devices and minimizing the individual weaknesses of others. We want to explore the possibility of building applications that have their user interface seamlessly distributed across co-located devices. We created the YanuX Framework to provide the guidelines and tools needed by developers to build those applications. This paper presents the framework and its architecture, which is outlined along with the description of its components. We end by presenting an early evaluation of YanuX and by discussing the status of our work along with directions for further research.

Seriouslgames based therapeutic approaches create environments that increase the motivation of patients to achieve successful completion of therapy programs that can be demanding. The therapeutic games should be designed and configured by therapists, who should also monitor and evaluate, on a regular basis, the therapy exercises masked by the games to measure the patient's progress in treatment. Thus, there is still a demand for customizable tools by therapists toward specific groups of patients. We are developing a solution that combines serious games, NUI, and sensors, such as Kinect and Leap Motion, to address both physiotherapy and cognitive stimulation therapy. This paper presents the Web-based platform that provides the gaming solution, detailing the work in progress on the components responsible for the therapists' supervision.

There is an emerging consumer-driven demand for a more personalised health system and, there is no question, the rapid evolution of the mobile apps market became an important driver for personalisation in the health field. The MAiThE (Mobile Apps to improve ThErapy) project focuses on the deployment and study of personalised mHealth apps to provide patients and carers with self-management capabilities to help them feel empowered in their ability to find strategies in a more informed and collaborative way, and to optimise therapy outside the clinical context, with remote support from health practitioners. The insight gathered with the development and assessment of the apps tailored to the end-users' needs will result in a conceptual model to guide in the development of future mHealth apps. The project will produce an impact study based on thorough apps evaluations conducted on the field with participants from different contexts.

There is a need to deliver personalized experiences in terms of synchronization between television broadcasts and second screen applications to avoid frustrating experiences. However, within a second screen gaming scenario based on TV broadcasts, if players synchronize with a delay higher than the real delay of the TV broadcast, they will have an unfair advantage over the others. To solve this issue, we introduce a software-based solution called Sync2FairPlay that can be integrated in any second screen gaming application. It provides a universal synchronization mechanism that helps users to achieve a pleasant second screen experience, while automatically dealing with cheating to provide a fair gaming experience. We also describe the user tests performed to validate our idea and the different components of Sync2FairPlay.

The mobile application BroiStu was developed due to the need of having a better insight on the impact of stuttering on people who stutter's everyday life. This paper presents a study on this application, verifying which features of impact of stuttering found in scientific literature are included in the application and making a comparison with a similar application. Furthermore, it also summarises a user study conducted with a first panel of experts. New findings and obtained results are discussed.

In this paper, we present the design of a mobile application to empower an integrated assistance to support users of the triad: --people with Parkinson--s disease, their carers and healthcare professionals--. Starting from a deep study of this triad--s needs, a mobile application was designed to support not just the communication between the triad users, but also to help them finding relevant knowledge to support their clinical issues as well as allowing the supervision of patients` daily routine and the recommendation for daily exercises. This application aims to facilitate the access to knowledge and provide professional support for both people with Parkinson--s disease and carers in their homes to improve the remote healthcare assistance.

In this paper we present an interaction mechanism that allows TV viewers to synchronise their second screen applications in a simple and effortless way. This mechanism relies on the user feedback to deliver in-sync second screen events, and was designed as a universal solution that can be used on an

Therapies based on serious games are gaining a lot of interest by the healthcare community. The efficiency of this approach is demonstrated by several studies and many projects. This paper presents the project Super-Fon, which is focused on a serious game developed as a mobile application to support speech therapeutic intervention in the phonological development area. The game design follows the metaphon therapy approach, implementing its phases and levels, and it intends to motivate children between three and eight years old to execute activities to improve phonological competencies while having a fun experience. A first prototype was developed for Android-based tablets.

We propose a platform with the goal of helping developers when they need to apply personalization to ubiquitous computing applications, ranging from simple mobile apps to rich multimodal systems. The platform’s core is a general personalization model, which provides the orientation and required tool

This paper describes the project I Aware my Stuttering, which is a system with a focus on a mobile application for smartphones directed to people who stutter. This software will allow users to register their stuttering related situations, registering, for example, the contexts in which they occur, the interlocutors and their reactions to the situations, and the emotions felt. The application provides a reporting module that includes charts to help visualizing how stuttering situations evolve according to several features. It will help promote daily self-monitoring of speech as a means of controlling stuttering, being personalized according to the user profile. The system also offers a module for the speech therapist, which can monitor and receive reports related to users which are her/his patients. This collected data will improve the therapeutic process by enhancing discussion about registers performed immediately after a real context situation. Additionally, this paper presents a first user study conducted to assess and validate the project's purpose and the central module for registration of stuttering related situations.

Blended learning refers to a mixing of different learning environments. It combines traditional classroom learning with modern computer-mediated activities. The present work presents the implementation of a Web-based system to help the application of blended learning to enhance learning in math courses of engineering degrees. The system is being integrated in the Moodle platform, which is used as the aiding electronic teaching system at our Polytechnic University. Our focus is on helping math learning, but we can apply it to courses that use similar platform approaches. The main goal of this paper is to present the system, focusing on the tool that facilitates the implementation of assessment moments, and discuss preliminary results according to teachers.

One of the recurrent major environmental problems is the high energy consumption. It has been challenging to find methods of persuading people to have better habits on energy usage. We are proposing the use of personalization to enhance a mobile and pervasive-based gaming approach to better foster domestic energy awareness close to people. The game is based on real-time domestic energy consumption data and presents persuasive feedback information, beyond the competitive feeling of the game. The personalization mechanisms are provided by an external web service that is designed to serve different applications, even if from different systems or domains.