Alternative text (alt text) is one of the most prevalent Web accessibility barriers affecting a wide range of media. Despite manifold efforts addressing its absence, recent work highlighted that unsuitable alt text is equally problematic and is underpinned by a lack of understanding and guidelines on what constitutes suitable alt text. In this work, we present an empirical exploratory study that investigates perceptions of Web content creators and visually impaired users on suitable alt text to bridge the functional gap between experiences and best available practice. Following a qualitative approach, 11 Web content creators and 11 visually impaired users were interviewed, and findings are reported on Web accessibility via screen readers and reasons for its deprioritization, WCAG conformance, and perceptions on alt text authorship, and suitability. The first much-needed trainability and suitability recommendations for alt text suitability are further proposed, and avenues for future work are discussed.

The evaluation of human responses in multimedia experiences using physiological data has a well-established presence in the academic literature. However, this field is currently undergoing transformative changes, driven by the accessibility of diverse and cost-effective devices, innovative software analysis methods, and the emergence of novel application domains such as Virtual and Augmented Reality and mulsemedia. To address the imperative of contextualizing these evolving trends in a contemporary context, this paper presents a systematic review with the objective of delineating the array of physiological data utilized in assessing Quality of Experience (QoE) and User Experience (UX) in multimedia studies. It also examines the devices employed for data collection and the analytical techniques applied to interpret the acquired data. While our review exposes both constraints and promising discoveries in these domains, it also emphasizes the escalating significance and practicality of leveraging physiological data in user assessments, especially as the boundaries between the physical and digital domains continue to blur.

Modern smart city services necessitate complex technological infrastructure with heterogeneous compute servers, networks, and communication protocols. However, there are many research issues in heterogeneous computing infrastructure for Intelligent transport systems (ITS) when using the services in the network. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to intelligent transportation services and their underlying infrastructure, built on an amalgamation of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and fog computing, and associated technologies. Specifically, this paper investigates the challenging issues of security, processing costs, and communication delays that frequently occur during the communication of data and messages. We propose novel, secure, and cost-effective schemes based on blockchain-assisted homomorphic encryption techniques. A Secure, Cost-Optimal Workload Assignment (SCWA) algorithm and a blockchain scheme made possible by Partially Hashing Homomorphic Encryption and Decryption (PHHE/D) are designed to distribute workload efficiently. We developed a simulator, MOTEL, that simulates the different functions of the proposed schemes and all the necessary components. Using MOTEL and data sets from real transport companies, the proposed approach is tested and evaluated using various experiments. The results demonstrate that, compared to existing solutions, the proposed approach significantly reduces processing costs and delays while maintaining an appropriate level of security in transport services.

Mulsemedia (Multiple Sensorial Media) authoring poses a considerable challenge as authors navigate the intricate task of identifying moments to activate sensory effects within multimedia content. A novel proposal is to integrate content recognition algorithms that use machine learning (ML) into authoring tools to alleviate the authoring effort. As author subjectivity is very important, it is imperative to allow users to define which sensory effects should be automatically extracted. This article conducts a twofold evaluation of the proposed semi-automatic authoring. The first is from a user perspective within the STEVE 2.0 mulsemedia authoring tool, employing the Goal–Question–Metric (GQM) methodology and a user feedback questionnaire. Our user evaluation indicates that users perceive the semi-automatic authoring approach as a positive enhancement to the authoring process. The second evaluation targets sensory effect recognition using two different content recognition modules, quantifying their automatic recognition capabilities against manual authoring. Metrics such as precision, recall, and F1 scores provide insights into the strengths and nuances of each module. Differences in label assignments underscore the need for ML module result combination methodologies. These evaluations contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of sensory effect recognition modules in enhancing mulsemedia content authoring.

In specialized medical research, eye-tracking analysis proves instrumental for monitoring and dissecting eye movements and gaze patterns. This methodology is employed to get insights into diverse human behavior, cognition, and health facets. This study analyzes radiologists gaze patterns as they locate optic discs in retinal fundus images. The underlying premise is that experts possess a more profound understanding of the designated area of interest (AOI) within retinal images than non-experts. We considered visual attention distribution, and the visual focus shift between experts and novice during the viewing task. Identifying expert radiologists will benefit in two main ways: first, it will facilitate the development of an effective training system that assists radiologists in recognizing their technical proficiency, and second, it will enable the automation of the diagnostic process. The proposed methodology utilizes insights from radiologists Region of Interest (IOR) to interpret experts and novice eye gaze behavior, classify radiologists expertise levels, and compare visual patterns among different expertise levels. This study introduces an automated tool to analyze experts behaviors within regions of interest, offering a comprehensive understanding of radiological diagnostic processes.

This study introduces MCOF, a multi-camera, computer vision-based system designed to assist visually impaired individuals with mobility on university campuses. The system operates locally and achieves the following performance metrics: (i) detecting body points within 1.2. 10–2seconds, (ii) identifying people, objects, and animals in 2.4. 10–2seconds, and (iii) detecting movements in 5.1. 10−2seconds. These results were obtained using a GTX 1,660 GPU with up to 6 cameras (or a 6,112MB stream) running concurrently. According to the MCOF architecture, events trigger tickets that are sent to an external information system, which can then implement its own safety and personnel protocols. Additionally, MCOF includes modules to handle electrical and network failures and features an obstruction detection routine for the cameras.

In traditional digital filing systems, people mostly use text as a key to categorise images, and retrieve them in the future.The use of other media as keys for image retrieval is rarely used, notwithstanding that multisensory digital mediamulsemediacan be harnessed to improve users' performance and help them to retrieve their images.In this respect, olfactory media (engaging the sense of smell) is an example, as people can categorise their images by using congruent olfactory media.Accordingly, we investigated the impact of employing olfactory media as a key for retrieving a set of images.Moreover, we also studied the impact of the usage of olfactory media in this context on a user's performance and Quality of Experience (QoE).To this end, we developed an olfactory-enhanced application (SCENT2IMAGE) in which olfactory media was emitted alongside a 5X5 matrix of images, of which users had to recognize 4 images congruent with the emitted scents.Furthermore, we developed a word-only version of the application (WORD2IMAGE) in which words alone were used as an equivalent key instead of olfactory media.Forty-four participants were invited and took part in our experiment, evenly split into a control and experimental group.Results highlight that using olfactory media does have a significant impact on user performance by helping them find related images.Moreover, using olfactory effects in this context was also found to enhance user QoE.Lastly, our findings underscore that users were willing to use olfactory-enhanced applications for categorizing/retrieving their albums and images.

Abstract Passive haptics have long been used to enhance the user’s experience in virtual reality (VR). However, creating props to be used in a virtual environment can be a complicated and lengthy process. Current research looks to create passive haptic props based on the layout of, or objects in, the user’s real environment. However, we identify three key limitations of current research. Firstly, procedural generation introduces many unknown variables into the design process, which complicates applying such techniques to scenarios requiring knowledge of the virtual environment’s layout ahead of time. Furthermore, such techniques limit the size and dimensions of the virtual space to that of the real space. Lastly, current research necessitates pre-scanning or real-time scanning of the user’s real environment, often requiring specialist equipment and expertise, thus limiting its generalisability. This research proposes P rop O riented W orld R otation , a technique that attempts to answer the aforementioned limitations and simplify the process of adding haptic feedback to VR applications. We implemented this technique in a demonstration game and give an overview of the steps taken to apply the technique in a real context. We analysed the demonstration system’s performance and conducted an initial user evaluation in three different physical environments. While our stress test of the system’s performance highlights the necessity for certain optimisations in complex environments, our initial user feedback suggests that users experienced a stronger sense of presence and feelings of safety in our passive haptics-enhanced environment. Hence, we conclude that our proposal has the potential to enhance experiences in VR with haptic feedback.

The design of educational games plays an increasingly important role in modern education. By combining learning with games, it can attract students' attention and making learning more interesting. This study describes the development of a platform designed specifically for the online high-level cooperative game in which students are encouraged to achieve their own goals as well as common goals to reach win-win situation. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to analyze students' overall perceptions of the platform. The results show that the design of the game platform had high perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, and players also showed positive attitudes and usage intentions. Therefore, a good game platform should have interactivity, educational value, problem-solving settings, and usability to provide the best gaming experience and have a positive impact on learning.

Mulsemedia (Multiple Sensorial Media) authoring is a complex task that requires the author to scan the media content to identify the moments to activate sensory effects. A novel proposal is to integrate content recognition algorithms into authoring tools to alleviate the authoring effort. Such algorithms could potentially replace the work of the human author when analyzing audiovisual content, by performing automatic extraction of sensory effects. Besides that, the semi-automatic method proposes to maintain the author subjectivity, allowing the author to define which sensory effects should be automatically extracted. This paper presents an evaluation of the proposed semi-automatic authoring considering the point of view of users. Experiments were done with the STEVE 2.0 mulsemedia authoring tool. Our work uses the GQM (Goal Question Metric) methodology, a questionnaire for collecting users' feedback, and analyzes the results. We conclude that users believe that the semi-automatic authoring is a positive addition to the authoring method.

Abstract In order to create immersive experiences in virtual worlds, we need to explore different human senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch). Many different devices have been developed by both industry and academia towards this aim. In this paper, we focus our attention on the researched area of thermal and wind devices to deliver the sensations of heat and cold against people’s skin and their application to human-computer interaction (HCI). First, we present a review of devices and their features that were identified as relevant. Then, we highlight the users’ experience with thermal and wind devices, highlighting limitations either found or inferred by the authors and studies selected for this survey. Accordingly, from the current literature, we can infer that, in wind and temperature-based haptic systems (i) users experience wind effects produced by fans that move air molecules at room temperature, and (ii) there is no integration of thermal components to devices intended for the production of both cold or hot airflows. Subsequently, an analysis of why thermal wind devices have not been devised yet is undertaken, highlighting the challenges of creating such devices.

In this article, the distributed formation-containment (FC) control issue is investigated for a class of discrete-time multiagent systems (DT-MASs) under the event-triggered communication mechanism. In order to save the communication cost and improve the utilization of communication resources, a novel dynamic event-triggered (DET) mechanism is developed by adding an auxiliary variable for each agent system, which is able to dynamically adjust the triggering threshold. A distributed FC control scheme under the DET mechanism is proposed for all the leaders and followers based on the available relative outputs. The purpose of the addressed problem is to design the FC controller such that all the leaders achieve a formation shape and all the followers converge into such a convex hull. To this end, the considered DT-MASs are first decoupled into a diagonal form by resorting to the property of the Laplacian matrix as well as the inequality technique. Then, two sufficient conditions are established to ensure the desired FC performance. Furthermore, the corresponding FC controller parameters are obtained in terms of the solutions to two matrix inequalities which only depend on the maximum and minimum nonzero eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix. Finally, an illustrative example is provided to verify the validity of the developed control scheme.

Omnidirectional videos have become a leading multimedia format for Virtual Reality applications. While live 360$^\circ$videos offer a unique immersive experience, streaming of omnidirectional content at high resolutions is not always feasible in bandwidth-limited networks. While in the case of flat videos, scaling to lower resolutions works well, 360$^\circ$video quality is seriously degraded because of the viewing distances involved in head-mounted displays. Hence, in this article, we investigate first how quality degradation impacts the sense of presence in immersive Virtual Reality applications. Then, we are pushing the boundaries of 360$^\circ$technology through the enhancement with multisensory stimuli. 48 participants experimented both 360$^\circ$scenarios (with and without multisensory content), while they were divided randomly between four conditions characterised by different encoding qualities (HD, FullHD, 2.5K, 4K). The results showed that presence is not mediated by streaming at a higher bitrate. The trend we identified revealed however that presence is positively and significantly impacted by the enhancement with multisensory content. This shows that multisensory technology is crucial in creating more immersive experiences.

Abstract Quality of Experience (QoE) is inextricably linked to the user experience of multimedia computing and, although QoE has been explored in relation to other types of multimedia devices, thus far its applicability to wearables has remained largely ignored. Given the proliferation of wearable devices and their growing use to augment and complement the multimedia user experience, the need for a set of QoE guidelines becomes imperative. This study meets that need and puts forward a set of guidelines tailored exclusively towards wearables’ QoE. Accordingly, an extensive experimental investigation has been undertaken to see how wearables impact users’ QoE in multiple sensorial media (mulsemedia) context. Based on the exploratory study, the findings have shown that the haptic vest (KOR-FX) enhanced user QoE to a certain extent. In terms of adoption, participants reported they would generally incorporate the heart rate (HR) monitor wristband (Mio Go) into their daily lives as opposed to the haptic vest. Other findings revealed that human factors play a part in user’s attitudes towards wearables and predominantly age was the major influencing factor. Moreover, the participants’ HR varied throughout the experiments, suggesting an enhanced level of engagement whilst viewing the multimedia video clips. Furthermore, the results suggest that there is a potential future for wearables, if the QoE is a positive one and if the design of such devices are appealing as well as unobtrusive.

Just-Noticeable Difference (JND) is the minimal amount of signal change that the human being is able to perceive. The human has five major sensing organs, namely, eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue, and therefore JND exists for the corresponding five signal modalities and their derivatives. JND can play an important role in many multimedia applications and services, because these imperfect human perceptual characteristics may be turned into advantages for relevant system design, development and optimization. This paper starts off by giving a general description for JND concepts and the related statistical processes. Then, existing computational models for visual JND, which represent the majority of the related research so far, are to be reviewed systematically, with both handcrafted modeling and machine learning approaches. Furthermore, research attempts will be surveyed for JNDs for audio, smell, haptics and gustatory signals, as well as cross-modality/media efforts. Finally, possible future directions and opportunities are analysed and discussed.

In this paper, we present a system that allows developers to add passive haptic feedback into their virtual reality applications by making use of existing physical objects in the user’s real environment. Our approach has minimal dependence on procedural generation and does not limit the virtual space to the dimensions of the physical play-area.

Abstract Quality of Experience (QoE) is inextricably linked to the human side of the multimedia experience. Whilst there has been a considerable amount of research undertaken to explore the various dimensions of QoE, one facet which been relatively unexplored is the role of individual differences in determining an individual’s QoE. Whereas this is certainly true of multimedia applications, when it comes to mulsemedia (multiple media engaging three or more human senses) this is even more so, given its emerging and novel nature. Accordingly, in this paper we report the results of a study which investigated the role that individual differences (such as age, gender, education, and smell sensitivity) have on QoE, when mulsemedia incorporating olfactory and haptic stimuli is experienced in cross-modal environments. Our results reveal that whilst users had a satisfying overall mulsemedia experience the specific use of cross modally matched odours did not result in significantly higher QoE levels than when a control scent (rosemary) was employed. However, aspects of QoE are impacted upon by all individual differences dimensions considered in our study.

Current authentication processes overwhelmingly rely on audiovisual data, comprising images, text or audio. However, the use of olfactory data (scents) has remained unexploited in the authentication process, notwithstanding their verified potential to act as cues for information recall. Accordingly, in this paper, a new authentication process is proposed in which olfactory media are used as cues in the login phase. To this end, PassSmell , a proof of concept authentication application, is developed in which words and olfactory media act as passwords and olfactory passwords, respectively. In order to evaluate the potential of PassSmell, two different versions were developed, namely one which was olfactory-enhanced and another which did not employ olfactory media. Forty-two participants were invited to take part in the experiment, evenly split into a control and experimental group. For assessment purposes, we recorded the time taken to logon as well as the number of failed/successful login attempts; we also asked users to complete a Quality of Experience (QoE) questionnaire. In terms of time taken, a significant difference was found between the experimental and the control groups, as determined by an independent sample t-test. Similar results were found with respect to average scores and the number of successful attempts. Regarding user QoE, having olfactory media with words influenced the users positively, emphasizing the potential of using this kind of authentication application in the future.

Using olfactory media to enhance traditional multimedia content opens up novel opportunities for user interactions. Whilst the influence of olfaction on user experience in mulsemedia (multiple sensorial media) environments has been previously studied, the impact of the fundamental dimensions of scent intensity and valence (odor hedonic dimension or pleasantness) have been largely unexplored. This is precisely what we target in this paper, which reports the results of an empirical investigation examining how scent intensity and valence impact mulsemedia Quality of Experience (QoE). Accordingly, 54 participants were exposed to different odor valences and scent intensity levels when viewing three short multimedia clips. In particular, we examine both subjective (self-reported) as well as objective QoE metrics, as evidenced by user heart rates and eye gaze patterns. Results show that whilst eye gaze patterns are largely unaffected by the experimental conditions, valence does have a statistically significant impact upon user heart rates, as does intensity for two of the three clips employed in our study. In terms of subjective QoE, results indicate that hedonic valence impacts on the sense of reality and enjoyment; however varying odor intensity levels do not seem to differentially impact on user experience, bringing into question the need for strong scent intensities.

In this brief, a new outlier-resistant state estimation (SE) problem is addressed for a class of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) with mixed time-delays. The mixed time delays comprise both discrete and distributed delays that occur frequently in signal transmissions among artificial neurons. Measurement outputs are sometimes subject to abnormal disturbances (resulting probably from sensor aging/outages/faults/failures and unpredictable environmental changes) leading to measurement outliers that would deteriorate the estimation performance if directly taken into the innovation in the estimator design. We propose to use a certain confidence-dependent saturation function to mitigate the side effects from the measurement outliers on the estimation error dynamics (EEDs). Through using a combination of Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and inequality manipulations, a delay-dependent criterion is established for the existence of the outlier-resistant state estimator ensuring that the corresponding EED achieves the asymptotic stability with a prescribed H∞performance index. Then, the explicit characterization of the estimator gain is obtained by solving a convex optimization problem. Finally, numerical simulation is carried out to demonstrate the usefulness of the derived theoretical results.

Multisensorial books enrich a story with either traditional multimedia content or sensorial effects. The main idea is to increase children’s interest in reading by enhancing their QoE while reading. Studies on enriched and/or augmented e-books also propose synchronizing additional content with text. However, they usually focus on audio, vídeo, images, or haptic feedback. In this work, we presentMBook, a tool for presenting multisensorial books. It decouples the book’s textual content from the additional content, as well as its synchronization, and rendering. Thus, a change in the additional content or its synchronization does not require changes to the book’s content. To enable fine-grained synchronization,MBookcaptures the reading position using an eye-tracker. Experimental results with students within the 13- to 19-year-old age group point toMBookbeing able to provide good usability.

Summary Considering end‐user research and proliferation of smartphones and REpresentational State Transfer (REST) interfaces, we envisage that smartphone owners can innovate to compose applications on the small screen. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a REST service development framework (viz, REST4Mobile) with the aim to enhance the usability when consuming on smartphones. Our design process uses the usability factors identified in our previous work as primary constraints for modeling the framework and a corresponding composition tool. Thus, sample REST services are developed with and then without the framework, and usability of composing the services on smartphones is evaluated. Evaluation was conducted by deploying the component REST services, the composition tool, and the resulting composite apps on a local machine. As the task of service composition is conducted directly on the smartphone's screen, the evaluation process is designed to be repeatable on remote servers and on the cloud. Results showed that constraints can be added into the REST architectural style on the basis of the influences of domain specific terms and human cognitive capabilities on the naming and size of the Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). In addition, the principles embodying the framework are found to be influential factors in enhancing the usability of REST services on smartphones.

Abstract The heterogeneity of the leading mobile platforms in terms of user interfaces, user experience, programming language, and ecosystem have made cross-platform development frameworks popular. These aid the creation of mobile applications – apps – that can be executed across the target platforms (typically Android and iOS) with minimal to no platform-specific code. Due to the cost- and time-saving possibilities introduced through adopting such a framework, researchers and practitioners alike have taken an interest in the underlying technologies. Examining the body of knowledge, we, nonetheless, frequently encounter discussions on the drawbacks of these frameworks, especially with regard to the performance of the apps they generate. Motivated by the ongoing discourse and a lack of empirical evidence, we scrutinised the essential piece of the cross-platform frameworks: the bridge enabling cross-platform code to communicate with the underlying operating system and device hardware APIs. The study we present in the article benchmarks and measures the performance of this bridge to reveal its associated overhead in Android apps. The development of the artifacts for this experiment was conducted using five cross-platform development frameworks to generate Android apps, in addition to a baseline native Android app implementation. Our results indicate that – for Android apps – the use of cross-platform frameworks for the development of mobile apps may lead to decreased performance compared to the native development approach. Nevertheless, certain cross-platform frameworks can perform equally well or even better than native on certain metrics which highlights the importance of well-defined technical requirements and specifications for deliberate selection of a cross-platform framework or overall development approach.

Abstract People interact with computers using their senses. Currently, in a digital context, traditional digital media like videos and images used to convey information to users, and these media can be used as a source of information. However, relatively few studies have been conducted on olfactory media as a source of information in a digital context. In this paper, we report on a study that examined the possibility of using olfactory media as a source of information and whether its usage as informational cues enhances learning performance and user Quality of Experience (QoE). To this end, an olfactory-enhanced quiz (web-based) was developed about four countries. The quiz contained different types of questions employing four types of digital media in their contents: text, image, audio and olfactory media. Four scents were used that were considered to be related to the respective countries. Sixty-four participants were invited to our experiment to evaluate this application. Our results revealed that usage of olfactory media synchronised with traditional digital media had a significant impact on learner performance compared to the case when no olfactory media was employed. In respect of user QoE, it was found that olfactory media influenced users positively; moreover, they were passionate about engaging with enhanced olfactory applications in the future.

Abstract A great deal of research effort has been put in exploring crossmodal correspondences in the field of cognitive science which refer to the systematic associations frequently made between different sensory modalities (e.g. high pitch is matched with angular shapes). However, the possibilities cross-modality opens in the digital world have been relatively unexplored. Therefore, we consider that studying the plasticity and the effects of crossmodal correspondences in a mulsemedia setup can bring novel insights about improving the human-computer dialogue and experience. Mulsemedia refers to the combination of three or more senses to create immersive experiences. In our experiments, users were shown six video clips associated with certain visual features based on color, brightness, and shape. We examined if the pairing with crossmodal matching sound and the corresponding auto-generated haptic effect, and smell would lead to an enhanced user QoE. For this, we used an eye-tracking device as well as a heart rate monitor wristband to capture users’ eye gaze and heart rate whilst they were experiencing mulsemedia. After each video clip, we asked the users to complete an on-screen questionnaire with a set of questions related to smell, sound and haptic effects targeting their enjoyment and perception of the experiment. Accordingly, the eye gaze and heart rate results showed significant influence of the cross-modally mapped multisensorial effects on the users’ QoE. Our results highlight that when the olfactory content is crossmodally congruent with the visual content, the visual attention of the users seems shifted towards the correspondent visual feature. Crosmodally matched media is also shown to result in an enhanced QoE compared to a video only condition.

Sensory studies emerged as a significant influence upon Human Computer Interaction and traditional multimedia. Mulsemedia is an area that extends multimedia addressing issues of multisensorial response through the combination of at least three media, typically a non-traditional media with traditional audio-visual content. In this paper, we explore the concepts of Quality of Experience and crossmodal correspondences through a case study of different types of mulsemedia setups. The content is designed following principles of crossmodal correspondence between different sensory dimensions and delivered through olfactory, auditory and vibrotactile displays. The Quality of Experience is evaluated through both subjective (questionnaire) and objective means (eye gaze and heart rate). Results show that the auditory experience has an influence on the olfactory sensorial responses and lessens the perception of lingering odor. Heat maps of the eye gazes suggest that the crossmodality between olfactory and visual content leads to an increased visual attention on the factors of the employed crossmodal correspondence (e.g., color, brightness, shape).

The massive growth in mobile data traffic and the heterogeneity and stringency of Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of various applications have put significant pressure on the underlying network infrastructure and represent an important challenge even for the very anticipated 5G networks. In this context, the solution is to employ smart Radio Resource Management (RRM) in general and innovative packet scheduling in particular in order to offer high flexibility and cope with both current and upcoming QoS challenges. Given the increasing demand for bandwidth-hungry applications, conventional scheduling strategies face significant problems in meeting the heterogeneous QoS requirements of various application classes under dynamic network conditions. This paper proposes 5MART, a 5G smart scheduling framework that manages the QoS provisioning for heterogeneous traffic. Reinforcement learning and neural networks are jointly used to find the most suitable scheduling decisions based on current networking conditions. Simulation results show that the proposed 5MART framework can achieve up to 50% improvement in terms of time fraction (in sub-frames) when the heterogeneous QoS constraints are met with respect to other state-of-the-art scheduling solutions.

We present a novel, multilayer interaction approach that enables state transitions between spatially above-screen and 2D on-screen feedback layers. This approach supports the exploration of haptic features that are hard to simulate using rigid 2D screens. We accomplish this by adding a haptic layer above the screen that can be actuated and interacted with (pressed on) while the user interacts with on-screen content using pen input. The haptic layer provides variable firmness and contour feedback, while its membrane functionality affords additional tactile cues like texture feedback. Through two user studies, we look at how users can use the layer in haptic exploration tasks, showing that users can discriminate well between different firmness levels, and can perceive object contour characteristics. Demonstrated also through an art application, the results show the potential of multilayer feedback to extend on-screen feedback with additional widget, tool and surface properties, and for user guidance.

Previous research has shown that adding multisensory media-mulsemedia-to traditional audiovisual content has a positive effect on user Quality of Experience (QoE). However, the QoE impact of employing mulsemedia in 360° videos has remained unexplored. Accordingly, in this paper, a QoE study for watching a 360° video-with and without multisensory effects-in a full free-viewpoint VR setting is presented. The parametric space we considered to influence the QoE consists of the encoding quality and the motion level of the transmitted media. To achieve our research aim, we propose a wearable VR system that provides multisensory enhancement of 360° videos. Then, we utilise its capabilities to systematically evaluate the effects of multisensory stimulation on perceived quality degradation for videos with different motion levels and encoding qualities. Our results make a strong case for the inclusion of multisensory effects in 360° videos, as they reveal that both user-perceived quality, as well as enjoyment, are significantly higher when mulsemedia (as opposed to traditional multimedia) is employed in this context. Moreover, these observations hold true independent of the underlying 360° video encoding quality-thus QoE can be significantly enhanced with a minimal impact on networking resources.

Different senses provide us with information of various levels of precision and enable us to construct a more precise representation of the world. Rich multisensory simulations are thus beneficial for comprehension, memory reinforcement, or retention of information. Crossmodal mappings refer to the systematic associations often made between different sensory modalities (e.g., high pitch is matched with angular shapes) and govern multisensory processing. A great deal of research effort has been put into exploring cross-modal correspondences in the field of cognitive science. However, the possibilities they open in the digital world have been relatively unexplored. Multiple sensorial media (mulsemedia) provides a highly immersive experience to the users and enhances their Quality of Experience (QoE) in the digital world. Thus, we consider that studying the plasticity and the effects of cross-modal correspondences in a mulsemedia setup can bring interesting insights about improving the human computer dialogue and experience. In our experiments, we exposed users to videos with certain visual dimensions (brightness, color, and shape), and we investigated whether the pairing with a cross-modal matching sound (high and low pitch) and the corresponding auto-generated vibrotactile effects (produced by a haptic vest) lead to an enhanced QoE. For this, we captured the eye gaze and the heart rate of users while experiencing mulsemedia, and we asked them to fill in a set of questions targeting their enjoyment and perception at the end of the experiment. Results showed differences in eye-gaze patterns and heart rate between the experimental and the control group, indicating changes in participants’ engagement when videos were accompanied by matching cross-modal sounds (this effect was the strongest for the video displaying angular shapes and high-pitch audio) and transitively generated cross-modal vibrotactile effects.<?vsp -1pt?>

The purpose of this study is to report on the industry’s perspectives and opinions on cross-platform mobile development, with an emphasis on the popularity, adoption, and arising issues related to the use of technical development frameworks and tools. We designed and conducted an online survey questionnaire, for which 101 participants were recruited from various developer-oriented online forums and websites. A total of five questions are reported in this study, of which two employed a Likert scale instrument, while three were based on multiple choice. In terms of technical frameworks, we find that PhoneGap, the Ionic Framework, and React Native were the most popular in use, both in hobby projects and in professional settings. The participants report an awareness of trade-offs when embracing cross-platform technologies and consider penalties in performance and user experience to be expected. This is also in line with what is reported in academic research. We find patterns in the reported perceived issues which match both older and newer research, thus rendering the findings a point of departure for further endevours.

Media content is consumed more and more on digital and mobile devices. Internet of Things enables media providers to move beyond the traditional content and entertainment space and offer a plethora of new services that creates an engaging user experience around content. However, one of the questions that remain open is how to design content that enhances users' quality of experience by widening the classic audio-visual multimedia content spectrum to stimulate also other human senses such as olfaction or touch. In this paper we look at systematic associations made between different sensory modalities (crossmodal correspondences) in a digital setup and on their influence on the quality of experience. Our experiments target various senses: audio, visual, olfaction and tactile and show that creating untraditional content that matches the visual dominants of the video does not contribute to an improved experience of mulsemedia.

Semantics is still a challenge to automation and to the improvement of the relationship between humans and machines. Content management systems have a lot of improvement possibilities using semantics. A news writing process incorporating a content management system that provides semantic search, semantic relationships between articles and communication with external semantic systems can improve the productivity of the writers and make the reader's task easier. This work presents a functional prototype of a content management system which focuses on the construction of semantic annotations based on domain ontology, reuse annotations in search and on relationship construction between stored texts, providing a semantic interface for external systems. We present in this paper the annotation algorithm, the use cases of annotation, article creation and editing, as well as an approach for doing a semantic search and creating semantic relationships between texts. The system enables users to create semantic annotations quickly and allows them to remove and add annotations, including those suggested by the annotation algorithm. The two approaches for semantic relationships between texts are accurate and useful, while the search tool is versatile because it allows users to search in semantic and non semantic fields at the same time and it also uses logic operators in all fields.

The aim of this paper is to identify whether the development of a context-dependent location tracking prototype would be possible with technology already present in modern smartphones. To do this, a market gap analysis of the current competitors, and how the final product would differentiate from the competitors are given. Furthermore, the chosen technologies and frameworks are described briefly followed by a technical presentation of the prototype and how it works. Finally, the concept and future work are discussed. As a result, the conclusion is that the prototype presented in this paper shows that it is possible to develop a context-dependent location tracking system with technology present in modern smartphones and thus providing proof-of-concept.

In accordance with current legislation designed to make public management more efficient and transparent, Brazilian Federal agencies have adhered to an open data publication policy, despite the challenge presented by datasets being published collectively rather than in isolation. Aiming to facilitate this process, this article presents the UnBGOLD, which adresses the need to connect the data in order to facilitate the publication of open semantically enhanced data. It is a tool that couples the architecture of open data publishing of the University of Brasilia and makes it possible to transform datasets into linked open data utilizing metadatas and ontologies in RDF formats, aside from making it possible for the data to be published automatically on the CKAN platform.

The use of multiple senses in interactive applications has become increasingly feasible due to the upsurge of commercial, off-the-shelf devices to produce sensory effects. Creating Multiple Sensorial Media (MulSeMedia) immersive systems requires understanding their digital ecosystem. Mulsemedia systems encompass a set of applications, and devices of different types assembled to communicate or express feelings from the virtual world to the real world. Despite existing standards, tools, and recent research devoted to them, there is still a lack of formal and explicit representation of what mulse-media is. Misconceptions could eventually lead to the construction of solutions that might not take into account reuse, integration, standardization, among other design features. In this paper, we propose to establish a common conceptualization about mulsemedia systems through a reference ontology, named MulseOnto, covering their main notions. To evaluate it, we applied ontology verification and validation techniques, including assessment by humans and a data-driven approach. The results showed that MulseOnto can be used as a consensual conceptual model for exploring the knowledge about the whole chain of mulsemedia systems.

Human perception is inherently multisensory involving sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Mulsemedia systems include the combination of traditional media (text, image, video, and audio) with non-traditional ones that stimulate other senses beyond sight and hearing. Whilst work has been done on some user-centred aspects that the distribution of mulsemedia data raises, such as synchronisation, and jitter, this paper tackles complementary issues that temporality constraints pose on the distribution of mulsemedia effects. It aims at improving response time interval in networked event-based mulsemedia systems based upon prior findings in this context. Thus, we reshaped the communication strategy of an open distributed mulsemedia platform called PlaySEM to work more efficiently with other event-based applications, such as games, VR/AR software, and interactive applications, wishing to stimulate other senses to increase the immersion of users. Moreover, we added lightweight communication protocols in its interface to analyse whether they reduce network overhead. To carry out the experiment, we developed mock applications for different protocols to simulate an interactive application working with the PlaySEM, measuring the delay between them. The results showed that by pre-processing sensory effects metadata before real-time communication, and selecting the appropriate protocol, response time interval in networked event-based mulsemedia systems can decrease remarkably.

The next generation of wireless networks targets aspiring key performance indicators, like very low latency, higher data rates and more capacity, paving the way for new generations of video streaming technologies, such as 360° or omnidirectional videos. One possible application that could revolutionize the streaming technology is the 360° MULtiple SEnsorial MEDIA (MULSEMEDIA) which enriches the 360° video content with other media objects like olfactory, haptic or even thermoceptic ones. However, the adoption of the 360° Mulsemedia applications might be hindered by the strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, like very large bandwidth and low latency for fast responsiveness to the user's inputs that could impact their Quality of Experience (QoE). To this extent, this paper introduces the new concept of 360° Mulsemedia as well as it proposes the use of Reinforcement Learning to enable QoS provisioning over the next generation wireless networks that influences the QoE of the end-users.

Serious games are becoming an alternative educational method in a variety of fields because of their potential to improve the quality of learning experiences and to facilitate knowledge acquisition and content understanding. Moreover, entertainment-driven learners are more easily motivated to benefit from the learning process through meaningful activities defined in a game context. Interfacing educational computer games with multisensorial interfaces allows for a seamless integration between virtual and physical environments. Multisensorial cues can improve memory and attention and increase the cognitive and sensory-motor performance. Despite of the increasing knowledge in sensory processes, multisensory experiences and interactions in computer based instruction remain insufficiently explored and understood. In this paper, we present a multisensory educational game - Fragrance Channel - and we investigate how enabling olfaction can contribute to users' learning performance, engagement and quality of experience. We compare results obtained after experiencing Fragrance Channel in the presence and absence of olfactory feedback on both a mobile and a PC. A knowledge test administered before and immediately after showed that our proposed educational game led to an improvement of performance in all the explored conditions. Subjective measurements carried out after the olfactory experience showed that students enjoyed the scenario and appreciated it as being relevant.

The need for effective approaches to handle big data that is characterized by its large volume, different types, and high velocity is vital and hence has recently attracted the attention of several research groups. This is especially the case when traditional data processing techniques and capabilities proved to be insufficient in that regard. Another aspect that is equally important while processing big data is its security, as emphasized in this paper. Accordingly, we propose to process big data in two different tiers. The first tier classifies the data based on its structure and on whether security is required or not. In contrast, the second tier analyzes and processes the data based on volume, variety, and velocity factors. Simulation results demonstrated that using classification feedback from a MPLS/GMPLS core network proved to be key in reducing the data evaluation and processing time.

Dominated by delay-sensitive and massive data applications, radio resource management in 5G access networks is expected to satisfy very stringent delay and packet loss requirements. In this context, the packet scheduler plays a central role by allocating user data packets in the frequency domain at each predefined time interval. Standard scheduling rules are known limited in satisfying higher quality of service (QoS) demands when facing unpredictable network conditions and dynamic traffic circumstances. This paper proposes an innovative scheduling framework able to select different scheduling rules according to instantaneous scheduler states in order to minimize the packet delays and packet drop rates for strict QoS requirements applications. To deal with real-time scheduling, the reinforcement learning (RL) principles are used to map the scheduling rules to each state and to learn when to apply each. Additionally, neural networks are used as function approximation to cope with the RL complexity and very large representations of the scheduler state space. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms the conventional scheduling strategies in terms of delay and packet drop rate requirements.

The next generation of multimedia services have to be optimized in a personalized way, taking user factors into account for the evaluation of individual experience. Previous works have investigated the influence of user factors mostly in a controlled laboratory environment which often includes a limited number of users and fails to reflect real-life environment. Social media, especially Facebook, provide an interesting alternative for Internet-based subjective evaluation. In this article, we develop (and open-source) a Facebook application, named YouQ 1 , as an experimental platform for studying individual experience for videos. Our results show that subjective experiments based on YouQ can produce reliable results as compared to a controlled laboratory experiment. Additionally, YouQ has the ability to collect user information automatically from Facebook, which can be used for modeling individual experience.

REST service are generally more appropriate for smartphones than its counterpart, SOAP. However, the flexibility, scalability and performance gained through REST services are never enough to meet the goal of addressing the complex and mobile relationships among people. That is, usability of the REST service must be enhanced for involving none-programmers to compose services on their smartphones thereby address the complex and mobile relationships among people. In this paper, we explored the factors influencing usability of the REST web service on the smartphone environment. Accordingly, the breadth and depth of URIs namespace, number of request parameters and response fields, and the naming of URIs, parameters and response fields are found to be the factors that influence the usability of composing REST services on smartphones.

The aim of this paper is to compare the learning effectiveness and learning motivation of digital game-based learning between the competitive and the cooperative mode. Forty-seven junior high school students were invited to participate in the learning experiment. The students were divided into two groups and played Fragrance Channel in two different modes. Pre-and post-tests were used to evaluate students' learning effectiveness under different conditions and an IMMS questionnaire was used to evaluate learning motivation. The results show no significant differences for both groups when evaluating learning effectiveness and motivation. However, both groups presented significant differences between their pre-and post-tests conditions when it comes to the acquired knowledge. We identified significant differences also for the satisfaction level showing that students enjoyed it more to play in the competitive mode.

Enhancing touch screen interfaces through non-visual cues has been shown to improve performance. In this paper we report on a novel system that explores the usage of a forcesensitive motion-platform enhanced tablet interface to improve multi-modal interaction based on visuo-haptic instead of tactile feedback. Extending mobile touch screen with force-sensitive haptic feedback has potential to enhance performance interacting with GUIs and to improve perception of understanding relations. A user study was performed to determine the perceived recognition of different 3D shapes and the perception of different heights. Furthermore, two application scenarios are proposed to explore our proposed visuo-haptic system. The studies show the positive stance towards the feedback, as well as the found limitations related to perception of feedback.

Students often use lecture recordings to learn and revise. This approach, however, demands time to locate and review relevant topics. The automatic reduction and indexing of lecture recordings, then, could focus students' attention on the most relevant content. This article investigates whether lecture recording reduction leads to improved learning outcomes on an undergraduate computer networking module. Students participated in a randomised trial which compared lightly edited full lecture recordings to those that had been significantly reduced in duration and indexed. A pre-test conducted after the initial lecture series was followed up with a post-test after several weeks of using the recordings. The results show a statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of perceived effort. However, only the students with little prior knowledge showed a statistically significant difference in learning outcome in favour of the reduced lecture recordings. Moderating factors, such as prior knowledge, warrant further research to help elicit guidelines to inform the design and deployment of future lecture video reduction approaches.

Virtual Reality (VR) offers new opportunities to marketers. Considering the fact that the primary role of marketing is to engrave a product or service to potential users and that VR arouses emotional responses and can influence the behavior of users, the applicability of VR to marketing cannot be underestimated. Accordingly, in this paper, we explore Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of VR in marketing ecosystems. Moreover, by adopting the means-end chain model, this paper focuses on the conditions that lead to a successful VR marketing campaign rather than any barriers associated with it. Results highlight the presence of 17 success factors for VR-based marketing campaign and provide insights to stakeholders who are considering whether or not to utilize VR technology in marketing their service or product.

Large diagrams of Unified Modeling Language (UML) are complex. In this paper we propose a novel approach to reducing this complexity by not focusing on UML itself but how we interact with it. We lift UML into an interactive 3D space and apply concepts and design guidelines of Natural User Interfaces (NUI). The goal is to present UML in a way that is easy to understand and that scales well regardless of the size and complexity of a software architecture. This research is aimed at a business landscape and collaboration between several architects. We start by describing the interactive system with a small introduction to the technologies in use and then look at the current state of UML and different interpretations of virtual realities. We follow up with our design rationale for the 3DML system and then evaluate it based on established design guidelines for NUI. We finally elaborate on valuable outcomes in the short and long term as well as a conclusion on the 3DML project in general.

The Brazilian Government has made available on the Web a massive volume of public data. This data may be structured, semi-structured or non-structured in order to turn the administration as transparent as possible. Thus, we notice the great challenge in providing applications capable enough to handle this Big Data environment, and to make information available for decision making. In this environment, data processing is done via new approaches from Information Science and Computer Science areas, by involving Technologies and processes for collecting, representing, storing and disseminating information. This paper presents a conceptual model, the technical architecture and the prototype implementation of a tool DBgoldbr, designed to classify government public information with the help of ontologies, by transforming open data into open linked data. To fulfill the purpose of the solution, we used Soft System Methodology to identify problems, to collect users needs and to design solutions that fit the purpose of specific groups. The DBgoldbr tool was designed to ease up the search for open data made available by many Brazilian Government institutions, so that this data can be reused to support the evaluation and monitoring of social programs, in order to support the design and management of public policies.

In recent years, the emerging immersive technologies (e.g. Virtual/Augmented Reality, multisensorial media) bring brand-new multi-dimensional effects such as 3D vision, immersion, vibration, smell, airflow, etc. to gaming, video entertainment and other aspects of human life. This paper reports results from an European Horizon 2020 research project on the impact of multisensoral media (mulsemedia) on educational learner experience. A mulsemedia-enhanced test-bed was developed to perform delivery of video content enhanced with haptic, olfaction and airflow effects. The results of the quality rating and questionnaires show significant improvements in terms of mulsemedia-enhanced teaching.

Recently, the concept of adding multisensory media components to complement and extend user Quality of Experience (QoE) of traditional media has gained attention from both academia and industry. Research works stimulating additional senses like olfaction (sense of smell), haptic (sense of touch) and gustation (sense of taste) have emerged. In particular in theme parks, multisensory experiences that also offer ambient lighting effects, vibrating seats, wind generators, mist effects, heaters/coolers, etc. are appearing. Considering this growing awareness and popularity, a key research challenge is to experimentally evaluate if and how these different effects affect user QoE. In this context, there is a lack of common test content and raw data results to support reproducible research and cross research team verification. This paper fills this gap. We share: the data from the empirical study; the video content; the olfactory components employed to enrich the video; the methodologies employed and various other aspects found through experience to be important. Uniquely, this work is complemented by two datasets, obtained in two separate but related empirical studies, one conducted in the UK, and the other in Ireland.

Smart TV devices have become a commodity in the past few years, enhancing the television (TV) with an array of new features, providing capabilities of Internet connection and computer/mobile-like abilities. However, most websites are not designed with the smart TV experience in mind, and usability problems arise when websites are viewed and interacted with on a TV device. To solve this challenge, we propose the use of responsive web design, a method that has become a standard in mobile devices, saving the need of developing custom TV-specific websites or Apps. We tested the current usability of a typical “desktop” website on the smart TV, and compared it to an alternative version of the same site but with our proposed responsive techniques being applied. Results provided an indication of improved usability and likeability by using our “TV-responsive” method compared to the nonresponsive one. However, while our TV-responsive website had a higher usability score, the differences were not statistically significant, with the exception of the usability on the ease of scrolling and most measured task completion times.

In this paper, we report on novel zooming interface methods that deploy a small handheld projector. Using mobile projections to visualize object/environment-related information on real objects introduces new aspects for zooming interfaces. Different approaches are investigated that focus on maintaining a level of context while exploring detailed information. Doing so, we propose methods that provide alternative contextual cues within a single projector and deploy the potential of zoom lenses to support a multilevel zooming approach. Furthermore, we look into the correlation between pixel density, distance to the target, and projection size. Alongside these techniques, we report on multiple user studies, in which we quantified the projection limitations and validated various interactive visualization approaches. Thereby, we focused on solving issues related to pixel density, brightness, and contrast that affect the design of more effective legible zooming interfaces for handheld projectors.

With the development of ubiquitous technologies that support the digitization of money, research is needed on how individuals’ private life practices are affected by new technological financial systems and how cash-based practices can inform their design. In this article, we report the cash-based monetary practices of one Ethiopian rural community and identify their implications for the design of new financial technology. Particularly, we focus on addressing the question, What characteristic features should go into the design of mobile money application(s) to embody a rural Ethiopian community’s money practices in social (marriage and death) and religious contexts? Primary data on everyday practices of the community were collected. Analysis of our data reveals that new financial technology design should support lived experiences such as embedded social meaning, segregated and aggregate money control, restricted money use, identity extension and hiding, refusal and acceptance of donations, disclosed and secret money practices, and assigning aesthetics to money. The article concludes by discussing possible ways of mapping these concepts into financial system design, thus contributing toward the development of cashless transactions and a cashless society.

Abstract The early days of voice over IP (VoIP) adoption were characterized by a lack of concern and awareness about security issues related to its use. Indeed, service providers and users were mostly preoccupied with issues related to its quality, functionality, and cost. Now that VoIP is a mainstream communication technology, security has become a major issue. This paper investigates the major security threats for VoIP communications and proposes a multipath approach solution, especially targeted for low bandwidth networks. Results show that security has an effect on VoIP quality especially for a large distance between communicating nodes and packet size. Results also show that our proposed multipath solution reduces significantly packet losses and performs better than single routing techniques in networks with low bandwidth capacities. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The interplay between system, context, and human factors is important in perception of multimedia quality. However, studies on human factors are very limited in comparison to those for system and context factors. This article presents an attempt to explore the influence of personality and cultural traits on perception of multimedia quality. As a first step, a database consisting of 144 video sequences from 12 short movie excerpts has been assembled and rated by 114 participants from a cross-cultural population, thereby providing a useful ground-truth for this (as well as future) study. As a second step, three statistical models are compared: (i) a baseline model to only consider system factors; (ii) an extended model to include personality and culture; and (iii) an optimistic model in which each participant is modeled. As a third step, predictive models based on content, affect, system, and human factors are trained to generalize the statistical findings. As shown by statistical analysis, personality and cultural traits represent 9.3% of the variance attributable to human factors, and human factors overall predict an equal or higher proportion of variance compared to system factors. Moreover, the quality-enjoyment correlation varies across the excerpts. Predictive models trained by including human factors demonstrate about 3% and 9% improvement over models trained solely based on system factors for predicting perceived quality and enjoyment. As evidenced by this, human factors indeed are important in perceptual multimedia quality, but the results suggest further investigation of moderation effects and a broader range of human factors is necessary.

Media-rich content plays a vital role in consumer applications today, as these applications try to find new and interesting ways to engage their users. Video, audio, and the more traditional forms of media content continue to dominate with respect to the use of media content to enhance the user experience. Tactile interactivity has also now become widely popular in modern computing applications, while our olfactory and gustatory senses continue to have a limited role. However, in recent times, there have been significant advancements regarding the use of olfactory media content (i.e., smell), and there are a variety of devices now available to enable its computer-controlled emission. This paper explores the impact of the audio stream on user perception of olfactory-enhanced video content in the presence of skews between the olfactory and video media. This research uses the results from two experimental studies of user-perceived quality of olfactory-enhanced multimedia, where audio was present and absent, respectively. Specifically, the paper shows that the user Quality of Experience (QoE) is generally higher in the absence of audio for nearly perfect synchronized olfactory-enhanced multimedia presentations (i.e., an olfactory media skew of between {−10,+10s}); however, for greater olfactory media skews (ranging between {−30s;−10s} and {+10s, +30s}) user QoE is higher when the audio stream is present. It can be concluded that the presence of the audio has the ability to mask larger synchronization skews between the other media components in olfaction-enhanced multimedia presentations.

Affect is evoked through an intricate relationship between the characteristics of stimuli, individuals, and systems of perception. While affect is widely researched, few studies consider the combination of multimedia system characteristics and human factors together. As such, this paper explores the influence of personality (Five-Factor Model) and cultural traits (Hofstede Model) on the intensity of multimedia-evoked positive and negative affects (emotions). A set of 144 video sequences (from 12 short movie clips) were evaluated by 114 participants from a cross-cultural population, producing 1232 ratings. On this data, three multilevel regression models are compared: a baseline model that only considers system factors; an extended model that includes personality and culture; and an optimistic model in which each participant is modelled. An analysis shows that personal and cultural traits represent 5.6% of the variance in positive affect and 13.6% of the variance in negative affect. In addition, the affect-enjoyment correlation varied across the clips. This suggests that personality and culture play a key role in predicting the intensity of negative affect and whether or not it is enjoyed, but a more sophisticated set of predictors is needed to model positive affect with the same efficacy.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the adaptation of some of the world's most popular Web sites to the “post-pc era” of using multiple devices for accessing the Web. Up till recently the PC used to be the only device used for accessing the WWW. This has changed dramatically over the past few years with the introduction of many powerful Internet-connected devices such as Smart Phones, Tablets and Smart TVs. Due to the many differences between these devices in terms of screen size, hardware power, input methods etc. in most cases a PC-optimized Web site is not optimally viewed in these devices, resulting in poor usability and User Experience. In this survey 49 of the world's most visited Web sites, according to Alexa.com, are being examined to see if they offer optimized versions for Internet-connected mobile devices and Smart TVs. Results show wide support for mobile devices in contrast to very limited support for Smart TVs.

This paper introduces a novel zooming interface deploying a pico projector that, instead of a second visual display, leverages audioscapes for contextual information. The technique enhances current flashlight metaphor approaches, supporting flexible usage within the domain of spatial augmented reality to focus on object or environment-related details. Within a user study we focused on quantifying the projection limitations related to depiction of details through the pico projector and validated the interaction approach. The quantified results of the study correlate pixel density, detail and proximity, which can greatly aid to design more effective, legible zooming interfaces for pico projectors - the study can form an example testbed that can be applied well for testing aberrations with other projectors. Furthermore, users rated the zooming technique using audioscapes well, showing the validity of the approach. The studies form the foundation for extending our work by detailing out the audio-visual approach and looking more closely in the role of real-world features on interpreting projected content.

It is of paramount importance that formative feedback is meaningful in order to drive student learning. Achieving this, however, relies upon a clear and constructively aligned model of quality being applied consistently across submissions. This poster presentation raises concerns about the inter-rater reliability of code reviews conducted by teaching assistants in the absence of such a model. Five teaching assistants each reviewed 12 purposely selected programs submitted by introductory programming students. An analysis of their reliability revealed that while teaching assistants were self-consistent, they each assessed code quality in different ways. This suggests a need for standard models of program quality, alongside supporting rubrics and other tools, to be used during code reviews to improve the reliability of formative feedback.

Perception of multimedia quality is shaped by a rich interplay between system, context and human factors. While system and context factors are widely researched, few studies consider human factors as sources of systematic variance. This paper presents an analysis on the influence of personality and cultural traits on the perception of multimedia quality. A set of 144 video sequences (from 12 short movie excerpts) were rated by 114 participants from a cross-cultural population, producing 1232 ratings. On this data, three models are compared: a baseline model that only considers system factors; an extended model that includes personality and culture as human factors; and an optimistic model in which each participant is modelled as a random effect. An analysis shows that personality and cultural traits represent 9.3\% of the variance attributable to human factors while human factors overall predict an equal or higher proportion of variance compared to system factors. In addition, the quality-enjoyment correlation varied across the excerpts. This suggests that human factors play an important role in perceptual multimedia quality, but further research to explore moderation effects and a broader range of human factors is warranted.

The required flexibility of future wireless networks architectures is aimed at allowing more innovation, reducing complexity and improving service offerings. Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been identified as an enabler for this adoption. In order to grasp a better understanding of the challenges faced as well as the potential uses cases, we identify the need for flexible software defined wireless network, its applications and challenges and propose an architectural framework.

In this letter, a novel salient region detection approach is proposed. Firstly, color contrast cue and color distribution cue are computed by exploiting patch level and region level image abstractions in a unified way, where these two cues are fused to compute an initial saliency map. A simple and computationally efficient adaptive saliency refinement approach is applied to suppress saliency of background noises, and to emphasize saliency of objects uniformly. Finally, the saliency map is computed by integrating the refined saliency map with center prior map. In order to compensate different needs in speed/accuracy tradeoff, three variants of the proposed approach are also presented in this letter. The experimental results on a large image dataset show that the proposed approach achieve the best performance over several state-of-the-art approaches.

Developing an interactive TV Commercial (iTVC) for Internet connected TVs is complicated by the number of different platforms, each with its own operating system and application programming interface (API). To achieve cross-platform compatibility, we propose to use standard web technologies, instead of proprietary APIs for each device. With our approach, only one iTVC was developed, which contained commonly used features of these kinds of advertisements, and used only web technologies (HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript). The iTVC was first developed on a desktop personal computer and was tested on three different smart TV platforms for feature compatibility. After achieving compatibility, a user study with 36 participants evaluated how platform-related differences affect aspects of user experience (UX) and effectiveness of the interactive ad. The measured UX/effectiveness aspects and usability were consistent regardless of the iTVC performance on each device. These results show the potential of web technologies to deliver a uniform (and effective) interactive Ad across a range of heterogeneous devices.

Multimedia synchronization involves a temporal relationship between audio and visual media components. The presentation of “in-sync” data streams is essential to achieve a natural impression, as “out-of-sync” effects are often associated with user quality of experience (QoE) decrease . Recently , multi-sensory media (mulsemedia) has been demonstrated to provide a highly immersive experience for its users. Unlike traditional multimedia, mulsemedia consists of other media types (i.e., haptic, olfaction, taste, etc.) in addition to audio and visual content. Therefore, the goal of achieving high quality mulsemedia transmission is to present no or little synchronization errors between the multiple media components. In order to achieve this ideal synchronization, there is a need for comprehensive knowledge of the synchronization requirements at the user interface. This paper presents the results of a subjective study carried out to explore the temporal boundaries within which haptic and air-flow media objects can be successfully synchronized with video media. Results show that skews between sensorial media and multimedia might still give the effect that the mulsemedia sequence is “in-sync” and provide certain constraints under which synchronization errors might be tolerated. The outcomes of the paper are used to provide recommendations for mulsemedia service providers in order for their services to be associated with acceptable user experience levels, e.g. haptic media could be presented with a delay of up to 1 s behind video content, while air-flow media could be released either 5 s ahead of or 3 s behind video content.

Multiple sensorial media (mulsemedia) combines multiple media elements which engage three or more of human senses, and as most other media content, requires support for delivery over the existing networks. This paper proposes an adaptive mulsemedia framework (ADAMS) for delivering scalable video and sensorial data to users. Unlike existing two-dimensional joint source-channel adaptation solutions for video streaming, the ADAMS framework includes three joint adaptation dimensions: video source, sensorial source, and network optimization. Using an MPEG-7 description scheme, ADAMS recommends the integration of multiple sensorial effects (i.e., haptic, olfaction, air motion, etc.) as metadata into multimedia streams. ADAMS design includes both coarse- and fine-grained adaptation modules on the server side: mulsemedia flow adaptation and packet priority scheduling. Feedback from subjective quality evaluation and network conditions is used to develop the two modules. Subjective evaluation investigated users' enjoyment levels when exposed to mulsemedia and multimedia sequences, respectively and to study users' preference levels of some sensorial effects in the context of mulsemedia sequences with video components at different quality levels. Results of the subjective study inform guidelines for an adaptive strategy that selects the optimal combination for video segments and sensorial data for a given bandwidth constraint and user requirement. User perceptual tests show how ADAMS outperforms existing multimedia delivery solutions in terms of both user perceived quality and user enjoyment during adaptive streaming of various mulsemedia content. In doing so, it highlights the case for tailored, adaptive mulsemedia delivery over traditional multimedia adaptive transport mechanisms.

Modern smartphones have a rich spectrum of increasingly sophisticated features, opening opportunities for software-led innovation. Of the large number of platforms to develop new software on, in this paper we look closely at three platforms identified as market leaders for the smartphone market by Gartner Group in 2013 and one platform, Firefox OS, representing a new paradigm for operating systems based on web technologies. We compare the platforms in several different categories, such as software architecture, application development, platform capabilities and constraints, and, finally, developer support. Using the implementation of a mobile version of the tic-tac-toe game on all the four platforms, we seek to investigate strengths, weaknesses and challenges of mobile application development on these platforms. Big differences are highlighted when inspecting community environments, hardware abilities and platform maturity. These inevitably impact upon developer choices when deciding on mobile platform development strategies.

Among the key components of designing accessible products and services for disabled users is accessibility testing and support. The VERITAS FP7 project has developed a platform that consists of several tools that provide automatic simulation feedback and reporting for built-in accessibility support at all stages of ICT product development. In this explorative pilot study, we evaluated the usability and technology acceptance of using three of these tools in the design of accessible GUI-based ICT products in five application domains. A sample of 80 designers/developers (12 female; 68 male) evaluated the three tools by filling in the standard SUS and TAM questionnaires. Results revealed good usability and technology acceptance for all three tools as a novel accessibility testing method. The VERITAS platform can offer an intuitive solution in accessibility design and can ensure that ICT products are designed for all.

Games are a popular form of entertainment. However, many computer games present unnecessary barriers to players with sensory, motor and cognitive impairments. In order to overcome such pitfalls, an awareness of their impact and a willingness to apply inclusive design practice is often necessary. The Global Game Jam offers a potential avenue to promote inclusive design practices to students of game development. As such, this paper evaluates the impact of an initiative to promote inclusive design practices during the 2014 Global Game Jam. An attitude questionnaire was distributed to both participants and non-participants at one event venue. The results indicate that, having enrolled in the initiative, students' attitudes improved. Furthermore, all attendees reported they were likely to pursue further learning opportunities and consider accessibility issues in their future games. This suggests that the Global Game Jam, and other similar events, present an attractive avenue to promote inclusive design practice within the context of digital game development. However, further analysis of submitted games, additional qualitative inquiry and a large-scale trial are needed to determine impact on practice and to form recommendations for future events.

Games can be used to support learning in several domains, including the secure use of computers. However, emphasizing different types of knowledge in a game design can lead to different outcomes. This study explores two game designs that aim to enhance students' ability to identify phishing hyperlinks. One design focuses on procedural knowledge: developing students' tacit ability to recognize phishing hyperlinks through systematic practice. The other design focuses on conceptual knowledge: helping students to explicitly reflect upon and identify the features of phishing hyperlinks. The results of a double-blind randomized trial with 66 participants suggests that using a game designed for conceptual knowledge leads to a greater increase in learners' ability to identify phishing hyperlinks. Hence, the use of strategies that develop conceptual knowledge can enhance the efficacy of anti-phishing educational games.

Educational research has shown that self-beliefs can have profound influences on learning behaviour and achievement. It follows, then, that beliefs about the nature of programming aptitude (e.g., students' mindset) and the way in which individuals perceive themselves as programmers (e.g., students' self-concept) could also have a salient impact on programming practice behaviour and the development of programming expertise. However, in order to test this hypothesis, a valid and reliable measurement instrument is needed. This paper draws upon the Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotion to assemble such a measurement instrument. An evaluation of the proposed measurement instrument with three cohorts of undergraduate computing students (N=239) then demonstrates that reliability and construct validity are adequate, while the concurrent validity of the conceptual framework is satisfactory. This suggests that the measurement instrument is suitable for further research into students' self-beliefs within the introductory programming context. However, it is important to note that this work represents only a first step and further validation is required to establish whether the measurement instrument is valid across different contexts and populations.

Traditional video sequences make use of both visual images and audio tracks which are perceived by human eyes and ears, respectively. In order to present better ultra-reality virtual experience, the comprehensive human sensations (e.g. olfaction, haptic, gustatory, etc) needed to be exploited. In this paper, a multiple sensorial media (mulsemedia) delivery system is introduced to deliver multimedia sequences integrated with multiple media components which engage three or more of human senses such as sight, hearing, olfaction, haptic, gustatory, etc. Three sensorial effects (i.e. haptic, olfaction, and air-flowing) are selected for the purpose of demonstration. Subjective test is conducted to analyze the user perceived quality of experience of the mulsemedia service. It is concluded that the mulsemedia sequences can partly mask the decreased movie quality. Additionally the most preferable sensorial effect is haptic, followed by air-flowing and olfaction.

No abstract available.

Mulsemedia—multiple sensorial media—captures a wide variety of research efforts and applications. This article presents a historic perspective on mulsemedia work and reviews current developments in the area. These take place across the traditional multimedia spectrum—from virtual reality applications to computer games—as well as efforts in the arts, gastronomy, and therapy, to mention a few. We also describe standardization efforts, via the MPEG-V standard, and identify future developments and exciting challenges the community needs to overcome.

User Quality of Experience (QoE) is of fundamental importance in multimedia applications and has been extensively studied for decades. However, user QoE in the context of the emerging multiple-sensorial media (mulsemedia) services, which involve different media components than the traditional multimedia applications, have not been comprehensively studied. This article presents the results of subjective tests which have investigated user perception of mulsemedia content. In particular, the impact of intensity of certain mulsemedia components including haptic and airflow on user-perceived experience are studied. Results demonstrate that by making use of mulsemedia the overall user enjoyment levels increased by up to 77%.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short range wireless technology that provides contactless transmission of data between devices. With an NFC enabled device, users can exchange information from one device to another, make payments and use their NFC enabled device as their identity. As the main payment ecosystem players such as service providers and secure element issuers have crucial roles in a multi-application mobile environment similar to NFC, managing such an environment has become very challenging. One of the technologies that can be used to ensure secure NFC transaction is cloud computing which offers wide range of advantages compare to the use of a Secure Element (SE) as a single entity in an NFC enabled phone. This approach provides a comprehensive leadership of the cloud provider towards managing and controlling customer's information where it allows the SE which is stored within an NFC phone to deal with authentication mechanisms rather than storing and managing sensitive transaction information. This paper discusses the NFC cloud Wallet model which has been proposed by us previously [1] and introduces a different insight that defines a new integrated framework based on a trusted relationship between the vendor and the Mobile Network Operator (MNO). We then carry out an analysis of such a relationship to investigate different possibilities that arise from this approach.

This paper explores the notion of cross-source integration of cloud-based, context-aware information. The objective is to develop a new solution that incorporates remote, web based configuration of Android phones and advances the research area of context-aware information and web applications. It expands the notion of context-awareness harvesting from web applications, enabling automatic adaptation and behaviour altering of smartphones in accordance with implicit user needs. Results from the conducted experiment show the viability of tailoring contextual information through a web application to provide users with timely, relevant and adapted application behavior and content. Through the developed application suite, we present a remote configurable, adaptive application solution to demonstrate the validity of our proposal. The novelty in this work is the new proposed solution and design whereby context-aware information is harvested from several dimensions to allow web application executions to build rich foundations on which algorithms for context-aware computation can be based.

Contemporary psychology has shown that self-theories can have a profound influence on affect and behavior. Entity-theorists, believing their traits are fixed, adopt maladaptive learning strategies in the face of difficulty. In contrast, incremental-theorists, believing their qualities can change, often adopt mastery-orientated strategies. However, can this concept be domain-specific? This poster presentation challenges the notion of a single dominant mindset. People can nurture a variety of beliefs about different traits, so in the minds of learners, programming aptitude may not be the same as intelligence. The results from a confirmatory factor analysis of 94 responses to an undergraduate programming experience survey indicate that beliefs towards aptitude are empirically distinct from those towards intelligence, suggesting that alternate self-traits should be considered when extending self-theories into specific domains.

As a short range wireless communication technology which consists of a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices, Near Field Communication (NFC) provides wide range of services from payment and access cards to loyalty applications. NFC facilitates the integration of such services into a single mobile device. Having several parties involved in NFC services and not having a common standard for it has raised a major effect on the adoption of this technology within developing industries. This is because all parties are claiming to have access to client's information such as bank account details. Consequently, payment application personalization, ownership and management as well as NFC ecosystem architecture have created several security issues that could be exploitable by attackers. Since NFC technology has lately emerged, there are not much academic sources available yet. As a result, there are plenty of confusions regarding NFC implementation business case options. This paper presents the concept of NFC ecosystem and discusses the previously proposed NFC cloud wallet model [14]. Moreover, further exploration of this model is carried out by considering some implementation assumptions in order to define a clear NFC ecosystem model.

It has been claimed that learning can be facilitated by a positive academic self-concept. Therefore, reinforcing this construct may benefit students and the application of 'projective identity' in educational multimedia could be a means of achieving this. To test this hypothesis, two versions of a debugging exercise were developed, with one incorporating elements of fantasy role-play. They were compared through a double-blind parallel-group randomised trial using a sample of 36 undergraduate computing students. Factor scores for academic self-concept in programming were imputed from responses to a 5-point Likert scale, validated through a confirmatory factor analysis of 91 responses. An ANCOVA revealed that students using the fantasy role-play learning activity developed a stronger self-concept than the control group, with respective gains of 2.4% and 1.1%. However, further work is required to determine if such modest gains are practically significant, can be further enhanced and maintained.

Governments around the globe are striving to provide e-government, online products and services to all the citizens of their respective countries. This has meant that there is a shift in the conventional mode of public service delivery from a face-to-face and telephone mode to electronic means. However, not all the citizens are making use of these changes and one demographic citizens group that is currently attracting immense interest related to their welfare, health and other such issues is the older people group. Using this as reasoning, the aim of this exploratory and explanatory research is to understand the e-government initiatives in the UK, more specifically London. To conduct this research, a mixed qualitative and quantitative research approach was pursued. It was concluded that the benefits of the Internet to many of the users is relative, depending on the age, perceptions and level of innovativeness of the user. It was learnt that in relation to quality, the local authority websites do contain useful and relevant information for the elderly. However, this information is difficult to access, mainly due to the lack of knowledge, or skills in the use of computers, or Internet. From this research it is expected that a contribution to academia will emerge in the form of a better understanding of issues related to e-government, the digital divide and older citizens. For industry, the contributions of this research is the identification and understanding of issues related with online products and services and the older citizen. For policymakers, this research proffers an understanding of issues related with demand and supply of online products and services that governments are currently providing.

Enhancing multimedia applications with olfactory sensations is one of the last challenges in the area. While there is evidence, both scientific and anecdotal, that olfactory cues help users in information recall tasks, there is a lack of work when the targeted information is one contained in a multimedia presentation, which is precisely the focus of this article. Accordingly, we present the results of two experimental studies. The first study measured the impact of olfactory media variation on the user's ability to perceive, synthesize, and analyze the informational content of olfactory-enhanced multimedia videos; the second study measured the impact of information content, and an information recall task in respect of user perception of the relevance, sense of reality, and acceptability of the olfactory media content, as well as the overall enjoyment of the experience. Results show that the use of olfactory media content, both pleasant and unpleasant, in multimedia displays does not significantly impact on information assimilation in a negative way. Moreover, the addition of a performance task may enhance the user's understanding of the correlation between the characteristic odor(s) and the scenario under consideration, as well as enable users to consciously learn the odors.

Rural areas often lack affordable broadband Internet connectivity, mainly due to the CAPEX and especially the OPEX of traditional wireless carrier equipment, the vast and sparsely populated areas and, notably, the lack of trained personal. Addressing these issues we have developed a self-managed heterogeneous Wireless Back-Haul (WiBACK) architecture which may be deployed to complement or even replace traditional operator equipment. To optimally utilize fixed wireless point-to-point connectivity, its configuration is to be adjusted properly to the characteristics of the wireless channel. Due to lack of trained personal, time constraints during rapid temporary deployments or run-time network reconfigurations, this task must be automated. Some technologies already provide built-in ranging mechanisms, while others require external, often manual configuration. Such mechanisms should optimally exploit the individual PHY and MAC configuration options. The resulting link properties, such as capacity and latency, are utilized to optimally allocate resources for QoS-aware Pipes. Accordingly, in this paper, we present the AI Radio CalibrateLink primitive, discuss its crucial architectural role in separating spectrum from capacity management and present evaluation results of our resource model for IEEE 802.11a links.

Today's wireless operators must support the triple-play service offerings demanded by the market or by regulatory bodies through so-called Universal Service Obligations (USOs). Typically, those services are offered within the scarce and precious wireless spectrum resources owned by the providers. In parallel, broadcasters provide live TV and radio programming via their own radio spectrum. The paradigm shift from live TV to time-shifted consumption blurs the previously clear separation between broadcasting services and multi-media content received via regular, wired or wireless, data networks. The expected reduction of live content through decomposition and clever rescheduling may result in temporarily vacated resources in the TV spectrum which could then be used for regular wireless data services. In this paper we argue that such a 'Dynamic Broadcast' scheme can be supported - at layer 2.5 - by our Wireless Back-Haul (WiBACK) architecture, focusing on the architecture and protocol requirements to integrate Unidirectional Technologies (UDTs) such as DVB-T2 or ATSC. Initial validation results show that our WiBACK architecture can support a 'Dynamic Broadcast' system and provides the mechanisms to orchestrate such coordinated white space usage while providing a common MPLS-based transport.

Previous studies concerned with mobile financial services for the poor have been narrowly conceived, mainly depending on secondary data and focusing on technical design issues without having fully understood individuals' complex relationships and money practices. In order to contribute to this knowledge gap and inform mobile money system design, an exploratory case study investigated social relationships and social payment practices among rural individuals in Ethiopia. Key findings regarding their money exchange practices include: (1) secrecy and disclosure of money exchange practices (2) acceptance and or rejection of money gift for some reasons, (3) personalize money giving and accepting practices, and finally (4) separating and labeling of money based on its purpose and source. A qualitative exploratory research approach with key informant focus group discussions served as the primary means of information gathering.

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is receiving a great attention by different communities (e.g. military and civil applications) thanks to its self-configuration and self maintenance potential. Securing a MANET is a very critical matter as it is vulnerable to different attacks and also it is characterised with no clear line of defence. Since any security solution relies on a particular trust model, there are different types of trust models that could suit MANETs. This paper present a design of security architecture based on the hybrid trust model. It consists of a set of servers (i.e. a Central authority Server (CAS), Threshold Authority Servers (TASs) and Delegated Authority Servers (DASs)) emulating certification authorities. Our security architecture caters for improving services availability and utilisation.

Security and efficient routing are two important parameters in sensor networks. In this paper we propose SSBCR (Secured Sector Based Bi-path Clustering and Routing) protocol that takes both these two issues into consideration. It uses a bi-path routing algorithm to decrease the computational overhead as well as energy dissipation in the nodes. A key pre-distribution scheme is proposed such that nodes in the route share keys while those that are not in the route do not share keys with nodes that are in the route. Simulations have been done for both small and large areas, low and high density, on-route and non-route connectivity scenarios. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol not only provides security but also maximizes sensor network lifetime and achieves a high probability of connectivity, particularly when the network is large.

Olfaction, or smell, is one of the last challenges which multimedia applications have to conquer. As far as computerized smell is concerned, there are several difficulties to overcome, particularly those associated with the ambient nature of smell. In this article, we present results from an empirical study exploring users' perception of olfaction-enhanced multimedia displays. Findings show that olfaction significantly adds to the user multimedia experience. Moreover, use of olfaction leads to an increased sense of reality and relevance. Our results also show that users are tolerant of the interference and distortion effects caused by olfactory effect in multimedia.

Olfaction is an exciting challenge facing multimedia applications. In this article we have investigated user perception of the association between olfactory media content and video media content in olfactory-enhanced multimedia. Results show that the association between scent and content has a significant impact on the user-perceived experience of olfactory-enhanced multimedia.

Most Adaptive Hypermedia Learning Systems (AHLSs) tailor presentation content and navigational support based on prior knowledge or cognitive styles of students separately. There is, however, a need to explore how the two individual difference characteristics could be combined in adaptive hypermedia learning systems in order to maximize learning and comprehension of educational materials. To this end, the study presented in this paper developed two adaptive hypermedia learning systems, one tailored to students’ prior knowledge, with the other tailored to their cognitive styles, with emphasis on Pask’s Holist-Serialist dimension. Findings indicate that, in general, adapting to either prior knowledge or cognitive styles improves learning performance.

Rural areas in emerging or developed countries often lack affordable broadband Internet connectivity. Especially in emerging countries this limits the access to knowledge, government services, etc. The major limiting factors are the CAPEX and especially the OPEX related to traditional wireless carrier equipment, the vast and sparsely populated areas as well as the relatively large energy footprint of such equipment. Since in many rural regions access to a power grid is not available or highly instable, ensuring a 24/7 operation of a cell site is a very costly task. To address these issues we have developed a carrier-grade heterogeneous multi-radio back-haul architecture which may be deployed to extend, complement or even replace traditional operator equipment. Our Wireless Back-Haul (WiBACK) network technology extends the wireless back-haul coverage while building on cost-effective and low-power equipment. In this paper we first present a pilot scenario in Maseru, Lesotho, where an entrepreneur starts out with three eKiosk/VoIP sites with the goal of covering large parts of the city of Maseru. Using a testbed resembling the initial setup and identical hardware as planned for Maseru, we evaluate the QoS-related performance of this WiBACK-based network and show that we can meet the QoS demands of the eKiosk/VoIP systems even under heavy load and that the system is capable to support the planned future network growth.

Mobility impaired people constitute a significant portion of the adult population, which often experience back pain at some point during their lifetime. Such pain is usually characterized by severe implications reflected on both their personal lives, as well as on a country's health and economic systems. The traditional 2-D representations of the human body often used can be limited in their ability to efficiently visualize such pain for diagnosis purposes. Yet, patients have been shown to prefer such drawings. However, considering that pain is a feeling or emotion that is subjective in nature, the pain drawings could be consequently regarded as a subjective means of communicating such pain. As a result, the study described in this paper proposes an alternative, which encompasses a 3-D pain visualization solution, developed in a previous work of ours. This alternative is complemented with the upcoming technique of pressure mapping for more objectivity in the pain data collection. The results of this study have shown that the proposed approach is a promising solution for the purpose intended, and it could generally prove to be a significant complementary method in the area of medical practice for the mobility impaired community.

The focus of this paper is on olfaction-enhanced multimedia applications, that is, combining computer generated smell with other media to enrich the users' experience and perception of a multimedia application. Within the general context of mulsemedia -- multiple sensorial media applications -- we review the literature and highlight challenges of enhancing (multi/mulse)media with olfaction.

The concept of synchronization is of fundamental importance in multimedia systems and applications. The focus of this this paper is on olfaction-enhanced multimedia, which concerns itself with associating computer-generated smell with other media. However, the lingering nature of smell, as opposed to the transitory nature of other media objects that multimedia applications are accustomed to, such as video and audio, means that specific attention needs to be given when synchronizing other media content with olfactory data. Consequently, this paper presents the results of an experimental study carried out to explore and investigate the temporal boundaries within which olfactory-data output in an olfaction-enhanced multimedia application can be successfully synchronized with other media objects from an end-user perspective. Results show the presence of two main synchronization regions, and that olfaction ahead of audiovisual content is more tolerable than olfaction behind content.

Recently, Web services security has shown a significant gesture as several specifications have been developed and implemented to meet the security challenges of Web services. However, the performance of the security mechanisms is fraught with concerns due to additional security contents in SOAP messages, the higher number of message exchanges to establish trust as well as extra CPU time to process these additions. In this paper, we consider and compare the performance of various security mechanisms applied on a simple Web service tested with different initial message sizes. The test results show that transport layer security mechanisms are considerably faster than message level security mechanisms. Moreover, the effect of adding SAML tokens is negligible and the performance of SAML-based Web services depends mostly on the underlying security mechanisms. Finally, the performance penalty of applying STS security mechanisms is significantly high comparing to non-STS mechanisms.

The two most important aspects of any image based steganographic system are the imperceptibility and the capacity of the stego image. This paper evaluates the performance and efficiency of using optimized quantization tables instead of default JPEG tables within JPEG steganography. We found that using optimized tables significantly improves the quality of stego-images. Moreover, we used this optimization strategy to generate a 16x16 quantization table to be used instead of that suggested. The quality of stego-images was greatly improved when these optimized tables were used. This led us to suggest a new hybrid steganographic method in order to increase the embedding capacity. This new method is based on both and Jpeg-Jsteg methods. In this method, for each 16 x 16 quantized DCT block, the least two significant bits (2-LSBs) of each middle frequency coefficient are modified to embed two secret bits. Additionally, the Jpeg-Jsteg embedding technique is used for the low frequency DCT coefficients without modifying the DC coefficient. Our experimental results show that the proposed approach can provide a higher information-hiding capacity than the other methods tested. Furthermore, the quality of the produced stego-images is better than that of other methods which use the default tables.

The experiment reported in this paper sought to discover the impact that enhancing multimedia applications with olfaction has on an information recall. In contrast to previously reported studies. our results showed that olfaction actually had a negative impact on information recall. We believe that this difference is due to the ambiental nature of olfaction in previous work, whereas in our study we used directed olfactory stimuli.

Traditionally, adaptive multimedia streaming schemes aim to adjust features such as bandwidth to respond to changing network conditions, in the hope the the user perceptual impact of any quality loss is, if not unnoticed, minimised. However, current solutions equally affect the whole viewing area of the multimedia frames, despite research showing that there are regions of the frame which are perceptually more relevant than others. This paper presents a novel eye-tracking-based adaptive scheme (ETAS) for multimedia streaming that performs transmission-related quality adjustments by selectively degrading the quality of those regions of the viewers are the least interested in, leaving perceptually relevant regions unchanged.

This paper presents the results of an experimental study carried out to explore, from an end user perspective, the temporal boundaries within which olfactory data can be used to enhance multimedia applications. Results show the presence of two main synchronization regions, and that olfaction ahead of audiovisual content is more tolerable than olfaction behind content.

When viewing multimedia presentations, a user only attends to a relatively small part of the video display at any one point in time. By shifting allocation of bandwidth from peripheral areas to those locations where a user's gaze is more likely to rest, attentive displays can be produced. Attentive displays aim to reduce resource requirements while minimizing negative user perception-understood in this paper as not only a user's ability to assimilate and understand information but also his/her subjective satisfaction with the video content. This paper introduces and discusses a perceptual comparison between two region-of-interest display (RoID) adaptation techniques. A RoID is an attentive display where bandwidth has been preallocated around measured or highly probable areas of user gaze. In this paper, video content was manipulated using two sources of data: empirical measured data (captured using eye-tracking technology) and predictive data (calculated from the physical characteristics of the video data). Results show that display adaptation causes significant variation in users' understanding of specific multimedia content. Interestingly, RoID adaptation and the type of video being presented both affect user perception of video quality. Moreover, the use of frame rates less than 15 frames per second, for any video adaptation technique, caused a significant reduction in user perceived quality, suggesting that although users are aware of video quality reduction, it does impact level of information assimilation and understanding. Results also highlight that user level of enjoyment is significantly affected by the type of video yet is not as affected by the quality or type of video adaptation-an interesting implication in the field of entertainment.

The two most important aspects of any image-based steganographic system are the quality of the stego-image and the capacity of the cover image. This paper proposes a novel and high capacity steganographic approach based on Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT) and JPEG compression. JPEG technique divides the input image into non-overlapping blocks of 8times8 pixels and uses the DCT transformation. However, our proposed method divides the cover image into non- overlapping blocks of 16times16 pixels. For each quantized DCT block, the least two-significant bits (2-LSBs) of each middle frequency coefficient are modified to embed two secret bits. Our aim is to investigate the data hiding efficiency using larger blocks for JPEG compression. Our experiment result shows that the proposed approach can provide a higher information- hiding capacity than Jpeg-Jsteg and Chang et al. methods based on the conventional blocks of 8times8 pixels. Furthermore, the produced stego-images are almost identical to the original cover images.

The concept of synchronisation is of fundamental importance in multimedia systems and applications. It relates to defining and maintaining the temporal relationships between two or more correlated media objects that are combined, processed and presented together to produce a multimedia system or application. The focus of the research presented in this paper is on olfactory enhanced multimedia, which concerns itself with associating computer generated smell with other media. However, the lingering nature of smell, as opposed to the transitory nature of other media objects that multimedia applications are accustomed to, such as video and audio, means that specific attention needs to be given when synchronising other media content with olfactory data. Results highlight the existence of two perceptual synchronisation regions for olfactory enhanced-multimedia applications. Moreover, olfaction ahead of audiovisual content was shown to be less noticeable than the inverse case, of olfaction behind audiovisual content.

This paper investigates the relationship between software development methodologies and usability. The point of departure is the assumption that two important disciplines in software development, one of software development methods (SDMs) and one of usability work, are not integrated in industrial software projects. Building on previous research we investigate two questions; (1) Will software companies generally acknowledge the importance of usability, but not prioritise it in industrial projects? and (2) To what degree are software development methods and usability perceived by practitioners as being integrated? To this end a survey in the Norwegian IT industry was conducted. From a sample of 259 companies we received responses from 78 companies. In response to our first research question, our findings show that although there is a positive bias towards usability, the importance of usability testing is perceived to be much less than that of usability requirements. Given the strong time and cost pressures associated with the software industry, we believe that these results highlight that there is a gap between intention and reality. Regarding our second research question our survey revealed that companies perceive usability and software development methods to be integrated. This is in contrast to earlier research, which, somewhat pessimistically, has argued for the existence of two different cultures, one of software development and one of usability. The findings give hope for the future, in particular because the general use of system development methods are pragmatic and adaptable.

A large number of the adult population suffers from some kind of back pain during their lifetime. Part of the process of diagnosing and treating such back pain is for a clinician to collect information as to the type and location of the pain that is being suffered. Traditional approaches to gathering and visualizing this pain data have relied on simple 2-D representations of the human body, where different types of sensation are recorded with various monochrome symbols. Although patients have been shown to prefer such drawings to traditional questionnaires, these pain drawings can be limited in their ability to accurately record pain. The work described in this paper proposes an alternative that uses a 3-D representation of the human body, which can be marked in color to visualize and record the pain data. This study has shown that the new approach is a promising development in this area of medical practice and has been positively received by patients and clinicians alike.

In this paper we present the results of an empirical study that examines user's perception - understood as both information assimilation and subjective satisfaction - of multimedia quality, when impacted by varying network-level parameters (delay and jitter). Results showed that whilst, the type of multimedia video content impacts user information assimilation, there was no statistically significant difference in the level as a result of error inclusion. The latter result demonstrates that delay and jitter does not negatively impact information assimilation; an important result for broadcast and distributed educational applications.

Traditional approaches to gathering and visualizing pain data rely on two-dimensional (2-D) human body models, where different types of sensation are recorded with various monochrome symbols. We propose an alternative that uses a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of the human body, which can be marked in color to visualize and record pain data.

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In most countries today, handwritten, paper-based medical prescriptions are the norm. While efforts have been made in the past and are being made at present to migrate toward electronic dispensation of prescriptions, these have generally omitted to incorporate ubiquitous computing technology in their proposed solutions. In this paper, we focus on this issue and describe a Jini-based prototypical solution for electronic prescriptions, which allows for their wireless transmission to in-range pharmacies and the augmentation of the service levels rendered to the user, with, for instance, information about queue lengths and estimated waiting times being provided to the patients. Clinical and user evaluation revealed that there were high levels of agreement as regards the prototype's effectiveness, ease of use, and usefulness.

This article presents the results of a study that explored the human side of the multimedia experience. We propose a model that assesses quality variation from three distinct levels: the network, the media and the contentlevels; and from two views: the technical and the user perspective. By facilitating parameter variation at each of the quality levels and from each of the perspectives, we were able to examine their impact on user quality perception. Results show that a significant reduction in frame rate does not proportionally reduce the user's understanding of the presentation independent of technical parameters, that multimedia content type significantly impacts user information assimilation, user level of enjoyment, and user perception of quality, and that the device display type impacts user information assimilation and user perception of quality. Finally, to ensure the transfer of information, low-level abstraction (network-level) parameters, such as delay and jitter, should be adapted; to maintain the user's level of enjoyment, high-level abstraction quality parameters (content-level), such as the appropriate use of display screens, should be adapted.

Chronic back pain is a debilitating experience for a considerable proportion of the adult population, with a significant impact on countries' economies and health systems. While there has been increasing anecdotal evidence to support the fact that for certain categories of patients (such as wheelchair users), the back pain experienced is dynamically varying with time, there is a relative scarcity of data to support and document this observation, with consequential impact upon such patients' treatment and care. Part of the reason behind this state of affairs is the relative difficulty in gathering pain measurements at precisely defined moments in time. In this paper, we describe a wireless-enabled solution that collects both questionnaire and diagrammatic, visual-based data, via a pain drawing, which overcomes such limitations, enabling seamless data collection and its upload to a hospital server using existing wireless fidelity technology. Results show that it is generally perceived to be an easy-to-use and convenient solution to the challenges of anywhere/anytime data collection.

We address the problem of integrating user preferences with network quality of service parameters for the streaming of media content, and suggest protocol stack configurations that satisfy user and technical requirements to the best available degree. Our approach is able to handle inconsistencies between user and networking considerations, formulating the problem of construction of tailor-made protocols as a prioritization problem, solvable using fuzzy programming.

We define quality of perception (QoP) as representing the user side of the more technical and traditional quality of service. QoP encompasses not only a user's satisfaction with the quality of multimedia presentations, but also his/her ability to analyze, synthesise and assimilate the informational content of multimedia displays. We found that significant reductions in frame rate and color depth does not result in a significant QoP degradation.

This paper proposes an approach that integrates technical concerns with user perceptual considerations for intelligent decision making in the construction of tailor-made multimedia communication protocols. Thus, the proposed approach, based on multicriteria decision making (MDM), incorporates not only classical networking considerations, but, indeed, user preferences as well. Furthermore, in keeping with the task-dependent nature consistently identified in multimedia scenarios, the suggested communication protocols also take into account the type of multimedia application that they are transporting. Lastly, this approach also opens the possibility for such protocols to dynamically adapt based on a changing operating environment and user's preferences.

Monitoring eye movement offers insights into visual perception, as well as the users associated attention mechanisms and cognitive processes. The paper presents the results of an empirical study that investigated the impact of differing multimedia presentation frame rates on the user's perceptual experience, as reflected through video eye path data. Results show that varying frame rates do not affect the median coordinate value of user eye gaze and therefore highlight that selection of visual cues, which defines a user's region of interest, is not adversely affected by frame rate variation.

Perceptual multimedia quality is of paramount importance to the continued take-up and proliferation of multimedia applications; users will not use and pay for applications if they are perceived to be of low quality. While traditionally distributed multimedia quality has been characterized by quality-of-service (QoS) parameters, these neglect the user perspective of the issue of quality. In order to redress this shortcoming, we characterize the user multimedia perspective using the quality-of-perception (QoP) metric, which encompasses not only a user's satisfaction with the quality of a multimedia presentation, but also his/her ability to analyze, synthesize, and assimilate informational content of multimedia. In recognition of the fact that monitoring eye movements offers insights into visual perception, as well as the associated attention mechanisms and cognitive processes, this paper reports on the results of a study investigating the impact of differing multimedia presentation frame rates on user QoP and eye path data. Our results show that provision of higher frame rates, usually assumed to provide better multimedia presentation quality, do not significantly impact upon the median coordinate value of eye path data. Moreover, higher frame rates do not significantly increase the level of participant information assimilation, although they do significantly improve overall user enjoyment and quality perception of the multimedia content being shown.

We investigate the impact of captions on deaf and hearing perception of multimedia video clips. We measure perception using a parameter called quality of perception (QoP), which encompasses not only a user's satisfaction with multimedia clips, but also his/her ability to perceive, synthesise and analyse the informational content of such presentations. By studying perceptual diversity, it is our aim to identify trends that will help future implementation of adaptive multimedia technologies. Results show that although hearing level has a significant affect on information assimilation, the effect of captions is not significant on the objective level of information assimilated. Deaf participants predict that captions significantly improve their level of information assimilation, although no significant objective improvement was measured. The level of enjoyment is unaffected by a participant's level of hearing or use of captions.

The vision of a new generation of network communication architectures, which deliver a Quality of Service based on intelligent decisions about the interactions that typically take place in a multimedia scenario, encourages researchers to look at novel ways of matching user-level requirements with parameters characterising underlying network performance. In this paper, we suggest an integrated architecture that makes use of the objective-technical information provided by the designer and the subjective-perceptual information supplied by the user for intelligent decision making in the construction of communication protocols. Thus, this approach, based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process, incorporates not only classical Quality of Service considerations, but, indeed, user preferences as well. Furthermore, in keeping with the task-dependent nature consistently identified in multimedia scenarios, the suggested communication protocols also take into account the type of multimedia application, which they are transporting. Lastly, our approach also opens the possibility for such protocols to dynamically adapt based on a changing operating environment. 1.

The concept of quality of service (QoS) in distributed multimedia systems is indelibly associated with the provision of an acceptable level of application performance. In turn this performance is itself dependent on both the perceived, subjective quality of the application as well as its robustness to network congestion. We suggest a framework for QoS management that incorporates not only classical QoS considerations, but, user preferences as well. Our approach constructs an appropriately tailored communication protocol using objective-technical judgements provided by the designer and subjective-perceptual judgements supplied by the user for intelligent decision making. Due to the nature of our problem, where these two information facets may be inconsistent, the need to apply a weight determination technique suitable to handle inconsistencies was indispensable. To this end, a fuzzy logic-based description of the problem has been developed and fuzzy programming was used to obtain a user-oriented ordering of QoS parameters.

In this paper we present the case for using specifically configured protocol stacks geared towards human requirements in the delivery of distributed multimedia. We define Quality of Perception (QoP) as representing the user side of the more technical and traditional Quality of Service (QoS). QoP is a term which encompasses not only a user's satisfaction with the quality of multimedia presentations, but also his/her ability to analyse, synthesise and assimilate the informational content of multimedia displays. The Dynamically Reconfigurable Protocol Stacks (DRoPS) architecture supports low cost reconfiguration of individual protocol mechanisms in an attempt to best maintain QoP in connections where the provided QoS fluctuates unpredictably. Results show that DRoPS can be used to improve on the QoP provided by legacy protocol stacks (TCP/IP, UDP/IP), especially in the case of dynamic and complex sequences.

An approach to the design of user-centred communications protocols is presented. Quality of perception (QoP) is a novel term which includes not only users' enjoyment and satisfaction with a multimedia presentation, but also their ability to assimilate its informational content. We show that a relation of proportionality can be obtained between QoP and low-level quality of service (QoS) parameters if the multimedia presentation content is taken into account. This relation could provide the basis for a preferential QoS parameter management scheme which is also user-oriented.

The widespread and increasing advent of multimedia technologies means that there must be a departure from the viewpoint that users expect a Quality of Service (QoS) which will only satisfy them perceptually.What should be expected of multimedia clips is that the QoS with which they are shown is such that it will enable the users to assimilate and understand the informational content of such clips.In this paper we present experimental resuks Iiiking users' understanding and perception of multimedia ctips with the presentation QoS.Results show that the quality of video clips can be severely degraded without the user having to perceive any significant 10ss of informational content 1.1 Keywords @xS, multimedi~user perception user understanding Permissionlo make digiml or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is gramed withou~fee provided ~hat copies are not made or distnirr!edfor profil or commercial advantage, and that copies bear th~nolice and the full citation on the first page.To copy other-.vis~torepublish, 10posI on servers or 10 redistribute to lists, requires prior specific pmrrrisslonandlor a fee.