International audience

We propose the concept of “transface” that defines interaction as a traversal for both surface-bound and surface-free interfaces. The transface concept considers an “inter-face” not as an object but as a relation, a medium, that defines interaction. A transface has five dimensions: alterity (1) because, as a medium, the transface establishes a relation with something other than itself, and the operations (2) it enables. Being a relation, a transface is perceived only by these three effects: as a traversable (3) with flows (4) that traverse it, providing a traversal experience (5). We present an exploration of the transface concept with concrete examples from the literature and interviews with five designers. Finally, we explore and experiment, through a deck of cards, how the transfaces framework might translate into practical design questions.

The introduction of a new product or service into society can have detrimental effects on the environment due to changes in usage and practices. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) designers need practical methods to address it. In this paper, we explore whether systemic modeling could help designers understand and mitigate these rebound effects. Drawing on systemic design and system dynamics, we prototyped a collaborative modeling methodology that ten professional designers applied to a case study in two workshops. We share insights on their adoption of the methodology and their feedback on its usefulness, usability, and feasibility. Our results indicate that designers find the systemic modeling approach relevant and useful for addressing rebound effects. Influence diagrams can help structure design ideas and identify unaddressed points, while dynamic modeling can help compare design strategies. Based on these findings, we propose a framework for integrating this approach into a design process.

Composers use music notation programs throughout their creative process. Those programs are essentially elaborate structured document editors that enable composers to create high-quality scores by enforcing musical notation rules. They effectively support music engraving, but impede the more creative stages in the composition process because of their lack of flexibility. Composers thus often combine these desktop tools with other mediums such as paper. Interactive surfaces that support pen and touch input have the potential to address the tension between the contradicting needs for structure and flexibility. We interview nine professional composers. We report insights about their thought process and creative intentions, and rely on the “Cognitive Dimensions of Notations” framework to capture the frictions they experience when materializing those intentions on a score. We then discuss how interactive surfaces could increase flexibility by temporarily breaking the structure when manipulating the notation.

Currently, flight safety is ensured by the collaboration of at least two pilots in the cockpit. Thanks to progress in automation and telecommunication, aircraft manufacturers and aviation companies envision that a single pilot in the cockpit assisted by a pilot on the ground (i.e Single-Pilot Operation) could ensure flight operations while requiring less human resources. However, without appropriate collaboration tools, this situation of remote collaboration may lead to a degradation of the awareness of actions and attitudes between the two pilots (i.e. mutual awareness). In this paper, we propose to enrich the understanding of the remote collaboration problems of two pilots through a fine-grained analysis of mutual awareness needs. First, we describe awareness frameworks from the literature. Second, we identify awareness issues during a case study involving a crew of pilots in two distant flight simulators. Third, we refine the relevant awareness concepts through exploratory prototyping of collaborative tools. These prototypes are based on three scenarios involving specific awareness requirements including 1) visualizing the physiological state of the pilot on board during a non stabilized approach, 2) an emergency decision making, and 3) global awareness during a whole flight for a better efficiency of the ground assistant operator at the arrival. In this article our contribution is a refined study of the awareness needs adapted to the context of remote collaborative piloting, with the final objective of designing more appropriate tools.

This paper presents an approach ensuring mutual awareness among airliner pilots using touch-based interactions. Indeed, touchscreens are making their way into cockpits, but touchbased gestures are less performative than gestures on physical controls, and they are limited in aircraft for efficiency and safety reasons. To support a safer perception by the other pilot, we propose to supplement the perception of performed gestures with graphical representations. Our hypothesis is that representing the effect of gestures is more relevant than representing gestures themselves. We introduce our design choices to build the representations for mutual awareness based on an analysis of the activity and graphical semiology. We report results gathered from walkthroughs of the designs with airliner pilots. These results confirm that representing the effects of gestures is an efficient means for mutual awareness. Our work shows how pilots understand the effect of gesture both as a result and as an impression.

We present the design concept of an accordion-fold interactive display to address the limits of touch-based interaction in airliner cockpits. Based on an analysis of pilot activity, tangible design principles for this design concept are identified. Two resulting functional prototypes are explored during participatory workshops with pilots, using activity scenarios. This exploration validated the design concept by revealing its ability to match pilot responsibilities in terms of safety, efficiency and collaboration. It provides an efficient visual perception of the system for real-time collaborative operations and tangible interaction to strengthen the perception of action and to manage safety through anticipation and awareness. The design work and insights enabled to specify further our needs regarding flexible screens. They also helped to better characterize the design concept as based on continuity of a developed surface, predictability of aligned folds and pleat face roles, embodied interactive properties, and flexibility through affordable reconfigurations.

An increasing number of domains, including aeronautics, are adopting touchscreens. However, several drawbacks limit their operational use, in particular, eyes-free interaction is almost impossible making it difficult to perform other tasks simultaneously. We introduce GazeForm, an adaptive touch interface with shape-changing capacity that offers an adapted interaction modality according to gaze direction. When the user's eyes are focused on interaction, the surface is flat and the system acts as a touchscreen. When eyes are directed towards another area, physical knobs emerge from the surface. Compared to a touch only mode, experimental results showed that GazeForm generated a lower subjective mental workload and a higher efficiency of execution (20% faster). Furthermore, GazeForm required less visual attention and participants were able to concentrate more on a secondary monitoring task. Complementary interviews with pilots led us to explore timings and levels of control for using gaze to adapt modality.

In order to contribute to a design for future airline cockpits that can address the limitations of touch-based interfaces, we analyze tangible dimensions of cockpit activity based on observations and pilot interviews. Working from these data, using TEI theory and concepts of phenomenology, we discuss the implications for tangible design of our findings. We found that the status of sensation in perception, the required level of control in actions, the safety issues using physical objects and the restricted mode of externalization, raise challenges for tangible design. Accordingly, we discuss key concepts for the design of the future cockpit, such as the use of a protected space where interaction may involve compressed externalization, rhythmic structures and customized context-aware adaptations.

We reflect upon the design of a paper-based tangible interactive space to support air traffic control. We have observed, studied, prototyped and discussed with controllers a new mixed interaction system based on Anoto, video projection, and tracking. Starting from the understanding of the benefits of tangible paper strips, our goal is to study how mixed physical and virtual augmented data can support the controllers' mental work. The context of the activity led us to depart from models that are proposed in tangible interfaces research where coherence is based on how physical objects are representative of virtual objects. We propose a new account of coherence in a mixed interaction system that integrates externalization mechanisms. We found that physical objects play two roles: they act both as representation of mental objects and as tangible artifacts for interacting with augmented features. We observed that virtual objects represent physical ones, and not the reverse, and, being virtual representations of physical objects, should seamlessly converge with the cognitive role of the physical object. Finally, we show how coherence is achieved by providing a seamless interactive space.

The current environment used by French air traffic controllers mixes digital visualization such as radar screens and tangible artifacts such as paper strips. Tangible artifacts do not allow controllers to update the system with the instructions they give to pilots. Previous attempts at replacing them in France failed to prove efficient. This paper is an engineering paper that describes Strip'TIC, a novel system for ATC that mixes augmented paper and digital pen, vision-based tracking and augmented rear and front projection. The system is now working and has enabled us to run workshops with actual controllers to study the role of writing and tangibility in ATC. We describe the system and solutions to technical challenges due to mixing competing technologies.

We focus on the creative use of paper in the music composition process, particularly the interaction between paper and end-user programming. When expressing musical ideas, composers draw in a precise way, not just sketch. Working in close collaboration with composers, we designed Musink to provide them with a smooth transition between paper drawings and OpenMusic, a flexible music composition tool. Musink's built-in recognizers handle common needs, such as scoping and annotation. Users can also define new gestures and associate them with their own or predefined software functions. Musink supports semi-structured, delayed interpretation and serves as a customizable gesture browser, giving composers significant freedom to create their own, individualized composition languages and to experiment with music, on-paper and on-line.

Abstract Summary: Genoscape is an open-source Cytoscape plug-in that visually integrates gene expression data sets from GenoScript, a transcriptomic database, and KEGG pathways into Cytoscape networks. The generated visualisation highlights gene expression changes and their statistical significance. The plug-in also allows one to browse GenoScript or import transcriptomic data from other sources through tab-separated text files. Genoscape has been successfully used by researchers to investigate the results of gene expression profiling experiments. Availability: Genoscape is an open-source software freely available from the Genoscape webpage (http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/Gim/genoscape/). Installation instructions and tutorial can also be found at this URL. Contact: [email protected]; [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

MOTIVATION: For the biologist, running bioinformatics analyses involves a time-consuming management of data and tools. Users need support to organize their work, retrieve parameters and reproduce their analyses. They also need to be able to combine their analytic tools using a safe data flow software mechanism. Finally, given that scientific tools can be difficult to install, it is particularly helpful for biologists to be able to use these tools through a web user interface. However, providing a web interface for a set of tools raises the problem that a single web portal cannot offer all the existing and possible services: it is the user, again, who has to cope with data copy among a number of different services. A framework enabling portal administrators to build a network of cooperating services would therefore clearly be beneficial. RESULTS: We have designed a system, Mobyle, to provide a flexible and usable Web environment for defining and running bioinformatics analyses. It embeds simple yet powerful data management features that allow the user to reproduce analyses and to combine tools using a hierarchical typing system. Mobyle offers invocation of services distributed over remote Mobyle servers, thus enabling a federated network of curated bioinformatics portals without the user having to learn complex concepts or to install sophisticated software. While being focused on the end user, the Mobyle system also addresses the need, for the bioinfomatician, to automate remote services execution: PlayMOBY is a companion tool that automates the publication of BioMOBY web services, using Mobyle program definitions. AVAILABILITY: The Mobyle system is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPLv2 on the project web site (http://bioweb2.pasteur.fr/projects/mobyle/). It is already deployed on three servers: http://mobyle.pasteur.fr, http://mobyle.rpbs.univ-paris-diderot.fr and http://lipm-bioinfo.toulouse.inra.fr/Mobyle. The PlayMOBY companion is distributed under the terms of the CeCILL license, and is available at http://lipm-bioinfo.toulouse.inra.fr/biomoby/PlayMOBY/.

PageLinker is a browser extension that allows to contextualise navigation by linking web pages together and to navigate through a network of related web pages without prior planning. The design is based on extensive interviews with biologists, which highlighted their difficulties finding previously visited web pages. They found current browser tools inadequate, resulting in poorly organised bookmarks and rarely used history lists. In a four-week controlled field experiment, PageLinker significantly reduced time, page loads and mouse clicks. By presenting links in context, PageLinker facilitates web page revisitation, is less prone to bookmark overload and is highly robust to change.

Using a participatory design process, we created three prototype augmented laboratory notebooks that provide the missing link between paper, physical artifacts and on-line data. The final a-book combines a graphics tablet and a PDA. The tablet captures writing on the paper notebook and the PDA acts as an "interaction lens" or window between physical and electronic documents. Our approach is document-centered, with a software architecture based on layers of physical and electronic information.

MOTIVATION: Almost all users encounter problems using sequence analysis programs. Not only are they difficult to learn because of the parameters, syntax and semantic, but many are different. That is why we have developed a Web interface generator for more than 150 molecular biology command-line driven programs, including: phylogeny, gene prediction, alignment, RNA, DNA and protein analysis, motif discovery, structure analysis and database searching programs. The generator uses XML as a high-level description language of the legacy software parameters. Its aim is to provide users with the equivalent of a basic Unix environment, with program combination, customization and basic scripting through macro registration. RESULTS: The program has been used for three years by about 15000 users throughout the world; it has recently been installed on other sites and evaluated as a standard user interface for EMBOSS programs.