Motivated by the rapid technological advancements achieved in the last five years and the pervasiveness of Artificial Intelligence (AI), this paper investigates the evolving role of HCI and revisits the seven grand challenges outlined in 2019: human-technology symbiosis, human-environment interactions, ethics, privacy and security, well-being, health and eudaimonia, accessibility and universal access, learning and creativity, and social organization and democracy. Through literature analysis, the paper reevaluates the status of each challenge and highlights emerging requirements. Key findings reveal the widespread impact of AI across all domains and emphasize the need for improved AI transparency, alignment with human values, and the development of explainable, personalized, and privacy-preserving technologies to enhance user trust and control. The analysis also highlights the interconnected nature of these challenges and firmly asserts the role of technology in actively supporting human activities and collaborating harmoniously with humans to help them live meaningfully and fulfill aspirations.

Visual analytics focuses on amplifying users’ reasoning and understanding by enhancing data analysis procedures with the efficient incorporation of information visualization and data processing techniques. In this study, we conduct an overview of this multidisciplinary field, focusing on both the process that formalizes its primary concepts and the affiliated research areas. We identify key developments in each area, as well as the challenges that arise when these areas are interconnected under the visual analytics process. We consider that to address the identified challenges, an appropriate representation of key user needs is essential. Therefore, inspired by human-centered design and its principles, we propose a novel methodological approach comprising a human-centered definition of visual analytics that expands on models of the field and quantifies the intermediate states of a data analysis. In addition to the theoretical aspects of the definition, we also provide a set of directions that align the process with technical aspects of the development cycle. In this respect, our research endeavor aims to transform the visual analytics process into an essential method for both conceptualizing data analysis systems capable of anticipating user needs and for streamlining their technical implementation.

Big Data analysis and insight extraction are critical in contemporary large-scale criminal investigations. Analyzing large sets of information related to criminal activities can assist in the identification of correlations between records which can be utilized as strategic intelligence information for the coordination of law enforcement efforts. A Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) officer tasked with this analysis requires tools that can enable Big Data exploration while being intuitive and without requiring the need for prior knowledge. A common practice of data analysis software is the ability to create dashboards that can provide all the necessary visualizations and filters to support such an analysis. However, when it comes to dashboard-wide data exploration through drill-down or roll-up analysis; review and evaluation of correlations between data records; and creation of collections with information important to an investigation, current solutions fall short. In this paper, we present a system that addresses these limitations by facilitating the visualization and exploration of diverse data sources, allowing for individual or concurrent analysis via user-configured dashboards. Individual data records of interest to the analysis can be reviewed and their correlations evaluated by the user, allowing for the creation of collections of records and their relationships based on formalized types of correlations.

Cross-border collaboration among Law Enforcement Agencies is essential for effective and timely suspect identification, especially when the availability of biometric data varies between agencies. This paper presents a scalable and secure approach for multimodal biometric identification across multiple jurisdictions. Our approach allows Law Enforcement Agencies to combine biometric modalities -facial images, fingerprints, and voice samples- and compare them with collaborating agencies, improving the overall accuracy and effectiveness of suspect identification. By leveraging deep learning models for indexing and comparison, efficient data retrieval was achieved without compromising privacy or security. To ensure the protection of sensitive biometric data, our approach incorporates advanced encryption mechanisms, including Homomorphic Encryption for secure computations and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES encryption) for safeguarding biometric information. Its decentralised architecture allows each Law Enforcement Agency to maintain independent instances of the Deep Learning Indexer and Comparator, minimising risks associated with centralising sensitive data and supporting seamless collaboration between agencies. This approach not only improves the accuracy of suspect identification but also enhances operational efficiency by allowing Law Enforcement Agencies to query and share biometric data securely across borders.

This paper addresses the growing issue of terrorists utilizing the Internet, and particularly the Dark Web market places, with the purpose of fundraising for their illegal activities. It proposes the Visual Analytics (VA) system, an advanced AI-powered tool, in an effort to combat cross-border financing associated with terrorism. The tools focus on semantic concept detection and large-scale visual data indexing, and the ultimate goal is to familiarize end-users, practitioners, and law enforcement investigators with these technologies. This paper discusses prior works concerning the presentation and visualization of Deep Learning results to users, outlines the main objectives, and provides fundamental usage instructions for the VA system.

Personal data is any information that relates to an individual. Before disclosing such data to third parties, data controllers must be aware of the de-anonymization risks associated with their datasets and take appropriate anonymization measures. To carry out such actions, data controllers require tools that can analyze the risks in their datasets while also providing the necessary anonymization methods for addressing those risks. Existing tools of this type are insufficient for handling high-dimensional data as well as visualizing their risks. In this paper, we demonstrate DaRAV (De-anonymization Risk Analysis through Visualizations), a tool that addresses these limitations by providing risk analysis methods for five types of complex, high-dimensional data through interactive visualizations, as well as anonymization methods that allow users to create anonymized versions of their data.

Widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is substantially affecting the human condition in ways that are not yet well understood. Negative unintended consequences abound including the perpetuation and exacerbation of societal inequalities and divisions via algorithmic decision making. We present six grand challenges for the scientific community to create AI technologies that are human-centered, that is, ethical, fair, and enhance the human condition. These grand challenges are the result of an international collaboration across academia, industry and government and represent the consensus views of a group of 26 experts in the field of human-centered artificial intelligence (HCAI). In essence, these challenges advocate for a human-centered approach to AI that (1) is centered in human well-being, (2) is designed responsibly, (3) respects privacy, (4) follows human-centered design principles, (5) is subject to appropriate governance and oversight, and (6) interacts with individuals while respecting human’s cognitive capacities. We hope that these challenges and their associated research directions serve as a call for action to conduct research and development in AI that serves as a force multiplier towards more fair, equitable and sustainable societies.

Nowadays more than a billion people worldwide experience some form of disability pointing out that accessibility is a major issue that should be taken seriously into consideration. Attempting to make people’s daily habits in the kitchen area easier and more comfortable, we designed an innovative smart accessible cupboard that can identify various information about the products that are placed inside it, such as their type, quantity, location and expiration date. The Smart Kitchen Cupboard is a component of the Intelligent Kitchen aiming to support users in that space by indicating where to find a desired item, assisting in a context-sensitive manner during the cooking process and helping the overall inventory organization. Our immediate plans include planning a full-scale user evaluation in order to get useful feedback about the current design decisions so as to further improve the prototype and integrate more features.

Successful transition of manufacturing enterprises to Industrie 4.0 (I4.0) is highly dependent on the adoption and integration of new technologies, toward making manufacturing processes even smarter and less wasteful. In this paper, we present the OPTIMAI project architecture for zero-defect manufacturing (ZDM), applicable to a variety of industrial verticals. To realise a standards-based approach, we elaborate on the parallels drawn between the presented architectural framework and two leading reference architectures underpinning the "factories of the future" vision (RAMI 4.0 and IIRA). System specifications for ZDM are hence defined according to the perspectives of the two architectural models, allowing us to examine cutting-edge technologies for ZDM (such as blockchain, AI and AR) as both an I4.0 solution, as well as an Industrial Internet of Things system.

Considering the prevalence of Ambient Intelligence, this work aims to enhance the interaction between farmers and Intelligent Environments, in order to support their various daily Agricultural activities, aspiring to improve the quality and quantity of cultivated species. Towards this direction, the Greta system was designed and developed, following a user-centered design process, permitting farmers/agronomists to easily monitor and control an Intelligent Greenhouse via a set of useful and usable applications. Greta offers a progressive web app (PWAs) targeting PCs, handheld devices, and technologically-enhanced artifacts of Smart Homes, while it also delivers an Augmented Reality application that visualizes the greenhouse's interior conditions in a sophisticated manner, and provides context-sensitive assistance regarding cultivation activities. In more detail, the system interoperates with the ambient facilities of an Intelligent Greenhouse allowing end-users to: monitor the conditions inside the greenhouse, remotely control the state of various actuators, be notified regarding the available/active automations, be aware of the optimal conditions for their plants to grow and receive relevant guidelines, be informed regarding any diseases, and communicate with experts for receiving treatment advice. This work describes the design methodology and functionality of Greta, and documents the results of a series of expert-based evaluation experiments.

This work aims to investigate how the amenities offered by Intelligent Environments can be used to shape new types of useful, exciting and fulfilling experiences while watching sports or movies. Towards this direction, two ambient media players were developed aspiring to offer live access to secondary information via the available displays of an Intelligent Living Room, and to appropriately exploit the technological equipment so as to support natural interaction. Expert-based evaluation experiments revealed some factors that can influence the overall experience significantly, without hindering the viewers’ immersion to the main media.

Motivated by a combination of social media, technological evolution, as well as new habits and preferences of TV content consumers, there is an increasing demand for enhancement of professional productions with user generated content. Studies have explored the potential and feasibility of this approach, indicating that footage from non-professionals can be effectively used to enrich the viewing experience. However, an important concern is whether such efforts are appealing to potential contributors, and what can actually impact their satisfaction and loyalty. Aiming to investigate these factors, this paper presents a mobile application for content contributors and a study involving 38 attendees of live events, using the application in the field. The events were hosted in two different countries, and transmitted by two well-known broadcasters. The results suggest that age, gender, technological expertise, and overall sharing attitude do not affect the satisfaction and loyalty of contributors. The differentiating factors, however, are the filming confidence and expertise of contributors, as well as the Wi-Fi/4G connectivity on-site. Implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations for similar endeavors are provided.

Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This article aims to investigate the Grand Challenges which arise in the current and emerging landscape of rapid technological evolution towards more intelligent interactive technologies, coupled with increased and widened societal needs, as well as individual and collective expectations that HCI, as a discipline, is called upon to address. A perspective oriented to humane and social values is adopted, formulating the challenges in terms of the impact of emerging intelligent interactive technologies on human life both at the individual and societal levels. Seven Grand Challenges are identified and presented in this article: Human-Technology Symbiosis; Human-Environment Interactions; Ethics, Privacy and Security; Well-being, Health and Eudaimonia; Accessibility and Universal Access; Learning and Creativity; and Social Organization and Democracy. Although not exhaustive, they summarize the views and research priorities of an international interdisciplinary group of experts, reflecting different scientific perspectives, methodological approaches and application domains. Each identified Grand Challenge is analyzed in terms of: concept and problem definition; main research issues involved and state of the art; and associated emerging requirements. BACKGROUND This article presents the results of the collective effort of a group of 32 experts involved in the community of the Human Computer Interaction International (HCII) Conference series. The group’s collaboration started in early 2018 with the collection of opinions from all group members, each asked to independently list and describe five HCI grand challenges. During a one-day meeting held on the 20th July 2018 in the context of the HCI International 2018 Conference in Las Vegas, USA, the identified topics were debated and challenges were formulated in terms of the impact of emerging intelligent interactive technologies on human life both at the individual and societal levels. Further analysis and consolidation led to a set of seven Grand Challenges presented herein. This activity was organized and supported by the HCII Conference series.

This paper describes an educational game that aims to familiarize cognitive impaired children with household objects, the overall home environment and the daily activities that take place in it. In addition to touch-based interaction, the game supports physical manipulation through printed cards on a tabletop setup, using a webcam to detect and track the cards placed on the game board.

Internet-of-Things (IoT) is no longer just a research hype, but rather a reality in which ICT plays a fundamental role. Programming the behavior of Smart Environments not only enables designers to create innovative interactive experiences for intelligent spaces, but also empowers their inhabitants to tailor the intelligent facilities according to their preferences. To that end, this paper presents the AmI-Solertis system that offers a complete suite of tools allowing management, programming, testing, and monitoring of all the individual artifacts (i.e., services, hardware modules, software components, etc.) of a Smart Environment, but also of the environment itself as a whole. In more details, it introduces a REST-based communication middleware that streamlines synchronous and asynchronous remote services usage. Moreover, it presents the AmI-Solertis web-IDE that aims to support users who wish to create, explore, deploy, and optimize behavior scripts that combine and orchestrate the various technological facilities of Smart Environments, by offering universal and personalized exploration facilities to accelerate their discovery and a web-based code editor with context-sensitive support features.

This paper reports on ongoing work regarding interactive 3D visualization of large scale data centres in the context of Big Data and data centre infrastructure management. The proposed approach renders a virtual area of real data centres preserving the actual arrangement of their servers and visualizes their current state while it notifies users for potential server anomalies. The visualization includes several condition indicators, updated in real time, as well as a color-coding scheme for the current servers’ condition referring to a scale from normal to critical. Furthermore, the system supports on demand exploration of an individual server providing detailed information about its condition, for a specific timespan, combining historical analysis of previous values and the prediction of potential future state. Additionally, natural interaction through hand-gestures is supported for 3D navigation and item selection, based on a computer-vision approach.

Adaptive user-interfaces are capable of: (a) composing themselves at runtime according to a given deployment profile typically encompassing user and usage-context information and (b) possibly dropping user-interface components and activate better alternatives in their place in response to dynamic profile modifications. While adaptive behavior increasingly gains interest for a wide range of software products and services, its support is very demanding requiring adoption of user-interface architectural patterns from the very early software design phases. While previous research addressed the issue of engineering adaptive interactive applications right from scratch, there is an important methodological gap as we lack processes for the systematic evolution of existing non-adaptive applications to adaptive ones. We present a stepwise transformation process of the user-interface source code by incrementally upgrading all relevant implementation structures towards user-interface adaptivity. Because all transformation actions have been chosen to be standard refactorings the conduct of the process is well-defined while adoption preserves the original application architecture and quality of the source code. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS • Provide a systematic software update process for user-interface adaptivity

This system paper describes two educational mini-games (a multiple-choice quiz and a geography-related game) that combine learning and ambient technology. Their innovative feature is that they offer physical interaction through printed cards on a tabletop setup, where a simple webcam monitors the table's surface and identifies the thrown cards. Following a brief discussion of ambient technology integration in the environment, the overall concept of these games is described and potential future improvements are outlined.

Information and Communication technologies have the potential to permeate the classroom and modernize the educational process. However, in the context of a smart classroom, building educational applications poses unique challenges from an HCI perspective, due to the diversity of user and context requirements. This paper introduces a framework that facilitates the design, development and deployment of pervasive educational applications that can automatically transform according to the context of use to ensure their usability. The collection of widgets incorporates both common basic widgets (e.g., buttons, images) and mini interfaces frequently used in educational applications, as ready-to-use modules. The designer can either (i) combine and customize widgets from both categories to build an interface just once, or (ii) build and incorporate it as a custom-made mini interface in the collection for future reuse. Finally, the framework's usability has been evaluated with users obtaining very positive results and potential suggestions for extensions.

User interface adaptation has been proposed in recent years as a means to achieve personalized accessibility and usability of user interfaces. Related user interface architectures, as well as a variety of related development method and tools, have also been elaborated. Admittedly, however, despite the recognized validity of the approach, which has been proved in practice in a series of prototype systems, the wider adoption and uptake of user interface adaptation approaches are still limited. One of the identified obstacles is the complexity intrinsic in designing such interfaces and the need of radically revising the current user interface design practice to account for (a) the alternative designs required for adaptation, (b) the parameters involved in driving adaptations (i.e., selecting among alternatives at a given point during interaction), and (c) the logic of adaptation at runtime. This article proposes a twofold tool-based support strategy for user interface adaptation development, based on (a) an adaptation development toolkit and related widget library, which directly embeds lexical level adaptations into common interactive widgets, and (b) embedding such a library in a common integrated development environment, thus allowing designers to define and view alternative adaptations at design time and create adaptable user interfaces through traditional prototyping. The aforementioned approach has been implemented in the domain of adaptable applications for older users, producing tools that are currently in use in the development of a large suite of interactive applications in various domains. The approach presented in this article is claimed to be the first and so far unique supporting rapid prototyping of adaptable user interfaces, thus minimizing the divergence between typical development practices and user interface adaptation development.

Today, augmented reality is evolving towards sophisticated approaches exploiting the opportunities offered by immersive environments and high quality 3D graphics. Such systems can prove to be very useful in the context of education, especially when learning involves reading and writing activities. However, the majority of existing systems relies on touch-based interaction, or on interaction with proprietary technological artifacts. This paper presents an approach to enhancing reading and writing on physical books through smart augmentation. It is based on the intuitive and unobtrusive monitoring of students gestures during reading and writing activities through cameras, facilitating context-aware content sensitive assistance without requiring any special interaction device.

This article outlines issues that emerge from the evolution of the Information Society towards Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments, focusing on the diversity of human needs, the dynamic evolution of context, and the multifaceted characteristics of interactive technologies. Such an evolution brings forward many implications and challenges in the context of Universal Access, that is, accessibility and usability of Information Society Technologies by all users, independently of individual abilities and characteristics. Identified research challenges include the investigation of human requirements in the context of AmI, suitable approaches to nonfunctional characteristics (such as accessibility, privacy, security, and safety), suitable models of the context of use, appropriate interaction devices and techniques for diverse users and contexts of use, interaction design for continuous and implicit interaction, elaboration of design methods suitable for very complex interactive environments, and mechanisms for interaction adaptation. This article argues that such challenges in the context of AmI environments can be addressed by systematically investigating the interplay between the user, the context, and the technologies. Such a research direction requires systematic approaches to diverse human needs, dynamic context characteristics, and technology possibilities, all of which need to be elaborated and validated in practice.

This paper presents a novel software platform for developing and interacting with multimodal interactive electronic textbooks that provide a Dual User Interface, i.e., an interface concurrently accessible by visually impaired and sighted persons. The platform, named Starlight, comprises two sub-systems: (a) the "Writer", facilitating the authoring of electronic textbooks, encompassing various categories of interactive exercises (Q&A, multiple choice, fill in the blanks, etc.); and (b) the "Reader", enabling multimodal interaction with the created electronic textbooks, supporting various features like searching, book-marking, replay of sentences / paragraphs, user annotations / comments, activity recording, and context-sensitive help. An iterative, user-centered design process was adopted, involving from the very early stages students and educators, resulting in the creation of eight textbooks for the primary and high school that are currently available in the Greek market. The paper discusses the competitive features of the Dual User Interface and of supplied functionality compared to existing accessible electronic books. It also consolidates the key design findings, elaborating on prominent design issues, design rational, and respective solutions, highlighting strengths and weaknesses, and outlining directions for future work.

In the design of user interfaces that adapt automatically to end-users and usage contexts, designers should be prepared to cope with large design spaces; these spaces will be necessary to accommodate design constraints posed by the diversity in the target user population and the various contexts of use. Adaptation-oriented design is considered a powerful design recipe addressing the compelling requirements of customization, accessibility, and high quality of interaction. Under this perspective, it must be carefully planned, designed, accommodated, and conducted within the life cycle of interactive systems, from the early exploratory phases of design and prototyping to evaluation, implementation, and deployment. Despite recent progress, the practice of designing automatic user-interface adaptations remains difficult, due to intrinsic complexity of the task and the current limited expertise of designers and practitioners. Toward overcoming such a difficulty, this article presents MENTOR, a tool providing (a) practical integrated support for all phases of adaptation design, through appropriate editing facilities; (b) practical support for a "smooth transition" from design to development through the availability of automated verification mechanisms for the designed adaptation logic, as well as the automated generation of "ready-to-implement" interface specifications; and (c) support for the progressive accumulation of design cases and of the related design experience and knowledge, in particular regarding adaptation.

The notion of ‘universal access’ reflects the concept of an Information Society in which potentially anyone (i.e. any user) will interact with computing machines, at anytime and anyplace (i.e. in any context of use) and for virtually anything (i.e. for any task). Towards reaching a successful and cost effective realization of this vision, it is critical to ensure that the future interface development tools provide all the necessary instrumentation to support inclusive design, i.e. facilitate inclusive development. In the meantime, it is crucial that both tool developers and interface developers acquire awareness regarding the key development features they should pursue when investigating for the most appropriate software engineering support in addressing such a largely demanding development goal (i.e. universally accessible interactions). This paper discusses a corpus of key development requirements for building universally accessible interactions that has been consolidated from real practice, in the course of six medium-to-large scale research projects, all completed, within a 10 years timeframe.

In automatic user interface adaptation, developers pursue the delivery of best-fit user interfaces according to the runtime-supplied profiles of individual end users and usage contexts. Software engineering of automatic interface adaptability entails: (a) storage and processing of user and usage-context profiles; (b) design and implementation of alternative interface components, to optimally support the various user activities and interface operations for different users and usage contexts; and (c) runtime decision-making, to choose on the fly the most appropriate alternative interface components, given the particular user and context profile. In automatic interface adaptation, the decision making process plays a key role in optimal on-the-fly interface assembly, engaging consolidated design wisdom in a computable form. A verifiable language has been designed and implemented which is particularly suited for the specification of adaptation-oriented decision-making logic, while also being easily deployable and usable by interface designers. This paper presents the language, its contextual role in adapted interface delivery and the automatic verification method. The employment of the language in an adaptation-design support tool is discussed, the latter automatically generating language rules by relying upon adaptation rule patterns. Finally, the deployment methodology of the language in supporting dynamic interface assembly is discussed, further generalizing towards dynamic software assembly, by introducing architectural contexts and polymorphic architectural containment.

Journal Article Unified user interface design: designing universally accessible interactions Get access Anthony Savidis, Anthony Savidis aInstitute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology—Hellas, Science and Technology Park of Crete, Heraklion, Crete, GR-71110, Greece Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Constantine Stephanidis Constantine Stephanidis ∗ aInstitute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology—Hellas, Science and Technology Park of Crete, Heraklion, Crete, GR-71110, GreecebDepartment of Computer Science, University of Crete, Greece ∗Corresponding author. Address: Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology—Hellas, Science and Technology Park of Crete, Heraklion, P.O. Box 1385, Crete GR-71110, Greece. Tel.: +30-2810-391741; fax: +30-2810-391740 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Interacting with Computers, Volume 16, Issue 2, April 2004, Pages 243–270, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2003.12.003 Published: 01 April 2004 Article history Received: 07 January 2002 Revision received: 09 December 2002 Accepted: 14 December 2003 Published: 01 April 2004

The accessibility of interactive computer-based products and services has long been an issue of concern to the Assistive Technology (AT) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) communities. In recent years, there have been several efforts aiming to document the consolidated wisdom in the form of general guidelines and examples of best practice. Despite their sound human factors content, these guidelines require substantial interpretation by designers, before they can generate practically useful and context-specific recommendations. In this paper, we examine how this task can be aided by blending scenarios of use and informal argumentation in the context of a structured technique referred to as Universal Access Assessment Workshop (UA2W). The paper provides a review of the technique and proposes two instruments, namely scenario screening and growth scenarios, which can be used to structure the conduct of UA2Ws. Finally, the paper summarises recent experiences in the use of these techniques in the context of a case study, which seeks to provide universal access insight to the design of a ward-based service to patient medical data.

Intelligence at the level of the user interface is currently being supported through a number of prevalent strands, including adaptive user interfaces, model-based user interface development and interface agents. Moreover, the term intelligent user interface typically implies the notion of dyna-mically enhancing the interaction with a single implemented artefact to suit different usage patterns, user groups, or contexts of use. This article extends this notion and describes how unified design artefacts can support the development of accessible and high quality user interfaces exhibiting the characteristics of multiple metaphor environments. To this effect, the article outlines the principles of unified user interface development and discusses how it can be used to advance Intelligent

For a number of years, the primary medium for propagating human factors input to interactive system development has been paper-based guideline reference manuals. However, in the recent past, a number of tools for working with guidelines have emerged to ease the tasks of: (i) accessing and retrieving guidelines, (ii) applying recommendations to design prototypes, and (iii) facilitating a more effective human factors input to the early stages of system development. This paper presents a new way for working with guidelines and discusses the functionality, properties, typical use and evaluation of a supporting tool environment, the Sherlock Guideline Management System. Sherlock builds upon and extends the results of previous efforts to address state of the art requirements and problems, as highlighted by recent practice and experience in the use of the current generation of guideline management systems. In particular, Sherlock provides an integrated environment for articulating and depositing guidelines, accessing past experience, propagating guidelines/recommendations to the user interface development life-cycle, and facilitating the automatic usability inspection of tentative design. Thus, Sherlock fosters persistency of organisational knowledge on guidelines and evolution of the accumulated design wisdom.

This article reports on the results of the second meeting and workshop of the International Scientific Forum, "Towards an Information Society for All," that took place in Crete, Greece, June 15-16, 1998. In particular, it elaborates on the international research and development agenda (Stephanidis et al., 1998), which resulted from the first meeting and workshop of the Forum in San Francisco, California, on August 29, 1997, in the context of the HCI International '97 Conference. This article elaborates on the proposed research and development agenda by identifying human-computer interaction challenges and clusters of concrete recommendations for international collaborative research and technological development (RTD) activities. Four clusters of recommendations are proposed. The first three facilitate reaching technological targets, and the fourth comprises accompanying measures. The three technological clusters concern the corresponding transitions from (a) productivity tools to environments of use, (b) individual users to communities of users, and (c) computer-assisted business tasks to computer-mediated human activities. The fourth cluster covers support (horizontal) actions needed to establish a favorable environment for the creation of an information society acceptable to all citizens. Each cluster is elaborated by means of specific recommendations, plausible RTD objectives, and likely or expected outcomes.

This article investigates the application of queuing modeling in intelligent multimedia user interfaces (IMUIs). We propose that queuing modeling constitutes an effective means for providing at runtime, assessment information concerning user-computer interaction (UCI) and can thus contribute to runtime adaptation. We present specific queuing systems that model the load posed to the user's sensory channels in IMUIs under different assumptions, and indicative (media-and-modalities allocation) adaptation policies that build on this modeling are exemplified. This article also outlines the implementation of an assessment software module that uses the proposed queuing modeling framework and its subsequent integration into an existing IMUI (in which it is used for the assignment of information to output modalities); both activities were undertaken to practically demonstrate that queuing modeling can be effectively used in IMUIs.

This article introduces the visionary goal of an information society for all in which the principles of universal access and quality in use prevail and characterize computer-mediated human activities. The article is based on the outcome of the 1st meeting of the International Scientific Forum "Toward an Information Society for All," which took place during the Seventh International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (HCI International '97), The objective of this meeting was to define a short-, medium-, and long-term international research and development agenda in the context of the emerging information society, based on the principle of designing for all users. The proposed agenda addressed technological and user-oriented issues, application domains, and support measures, which are necessary for the establishment of a favorable environment: for the creation of an infatuation society acceptable to all citizens.

Existing systems which enable accessibility to graphical user interfaces (GUIs) by blind people follow an `adaptation strategy'; each system adopts its own hard-coded policy for reproducing visual dialogues in a non-visual form, without knowledge about the application domain or the particular dialogue characteristics. It is argued that non-visual user interfaces should be more than automatically generated adaptations of visual dialogues. Tools are required to facilitate purposeful non-visual interface construction, allowing iterative design and implementation. Such tools should cater for the construction of `integrated' user interfaces, which are concurrently accessible by sighted and blind users. Thus, the concept of dual user interfaces is introduced, arguably as the most appropriate basis to address this important issue of concurrent accessibility, in order to prevent segregation of blind people in computer-based working environments. A user interface management system (UIMS) has been developed, called HOMER, which facilitates the development of dual user interfaces. HOMER supports the integration of visual and non-visual toolkits of interaction elements; a non-visual toolkit, called COMONKIT, has been also implemented for building non-visual user interfaces, and has been incorporated in HOMER.

Intelligent user interfaces are characterised by their capability to adapt at run-time and make several communication decisions concerning `what', `when', `why' and `how' to communicate, through a certain adaptation strategy. In this paper, we present a methodological approach to assist this decision making process, which is based on a clear separation of the important attributes that characterise the adaptation strategy, namely the adaptation determinants, constituents, goals and rules. Based on this separation, we also present a methodological approach for the formulation of adaptation rules, which utilises techniques from the domain of multiple criteria decision making. It is argued that, following the proposed approach, the adaptation strategy can be easily customised to the requirements of different application domains and user groups, and can be re-used with minor modifications in different applications. As a result, developers of intelligent user interfaces can be significantl...

This article proposes and describes a representational framework and a supporting tool environment for embedding and propagating human factors expertise into high level user interface design and development platforms. The proposed framework allows user interface designers to elicit, accommodate, and articulate user interface guidelines and results of experimental studies into reusable, evolutionary, and "living" design cases. The building blocks of the representational framework are a set of primitive constructs for consolidating the semantics of human factors knowledge into a design representation that characterizes the physical level of interaction. This is achieved through the development of a logical framework based on preference constraints and an initial set of preference and indifference expressions. The preference constraints provide a reasoning engine and a proof strategy for compiling a preference ordering of competing design alternatives and subsequently aggregating them into indifferent classes of design options per interaction element. The article also reports the implications of the proposed technique for user interface designers and the underlying requirements of user interface development platforms. Finally, the representational sufficiency of the proposed approach is discussed in the context of recent case studies aiming to consolidate human factors knowledge into a reusable repository supporting the ergonomic design of user interfaces in two example application domains, namely nonvisual hypermedia accessible to blind people and interpersonal communication aids for speech-motor-impaired and language-cognitive-impaired users.

In this paper, we are concerned with the run-time communication decisions which need to be made by an intelligent user interface. We model communication decisions as a decision-making process, where a selection among a set of alternative constituents is needed, in order to satisfy specific design goals. Based on techniques from the domains of multiple-criteria decision making and decision making under doubt, we propose the use of a model which takes into account the significance of each constituent toward the satisfaction of each design goal, as well as the consideration of the decision maker (interface designer) regarding the significance of each design goal. Following the proposed approach, a design strategy can be represented by a design vector, and thus, we can define properties of, and relationships between, different design strategies, based on their respective vectors. A specific example deploying the proposed model is presented, based on data from the relevant literature. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This paper describes USE-IT, a knowledge-based tool for automating the design of interactions at the physical level, so as to ensure accessibility of the target user interface by different user groups, including people with disabilities. To achieve this, USE-IT elicits, manipulates and interprets representations of design knowledge in order to reason about, select and decide upon lexical adaptation constituents of a user interface. Adaptation constituents are attributes of abstract interaction object classes. USE-IT generates a collection of adaptation rules (i.e. a lexical specification scenario), based on design constraints generated from three basic knowledge sources: (a) the user model, (b) the task schema, and (c) a set of platform constraints (i.e. interaction objects, attributes, device availability, etc.). A data structure called the adaptability model tree has been designed to (i) facilitate the development of plausible semantics of adaptation at the lexical level of interaction, (ii) allow unification of design constraints, and (iii) enable selection of maximally preferred design options. The output of USE-IT can be subsequently interpreted by the run-time libraries of a high-level user interface development toolkit, which provides the required implementation support for realizing the user-adapted interface on a target platform.

Article Free Access Share on Developing dual user interfaces for integrating blind and sighted users: the HOMER UIMS Authors: Anthony Savidis Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Science and Technology Park of Crete, P.O. Box 1385, GR 711 10, Heraklion, Crete, Greece Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Science and Technology Park of Crete, P.O. Box 1385, GR 711 10, Heraklion, Crete, GreeceView Profile , Constantine Stephanidis Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Science and Technology Park of Crete, P.O. Box 1385, GR 711 10, Heraklion, Crete, Greece Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Science and Technology Park of Crete, P.O. Box 1385, GR 711 10, Heraklion, Crete, GreeceView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '95: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 1995 Pages 106–113https://doi.org/10.1145/223904.223918Published:01 May 1995Publication History 48citation811DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations48Total Downloads811Last 12 Months41Last 6 weeks4 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteView all FormatsPDF