The Interaction Era is evolving and extending to the Human-Computer Integration Era, in which the relationship between humans and technologies is characterized as a partnership. Motivated by this evolution, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review to present the current state of knowledge about the emerging paradigm of Human-Computer Integration (HInt), as well as its opportunities and challenges for the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) area. As a result, we organize the existing knowledge and research on HInt which describes it as a new interaction paradigm. Our findings indicate that HInt is a topic of growing interest in the HCI Community, and provide an overview of existing initiatives and key research gaps on HInt within the HCI scope. As contributions, our results are useful to (1) expand the HCI community’s knowledge regarding this emerging paradigm and (2) stimulate new initiatives and contributions to the consolidation and evolution of the HCI with a lens on HInt.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) prevalence rates are increasing and serious games have shown a valuable potential to aid the treatment of autistic individuals. Hence, a Systematic Literature Review was conducted aiming at categorizing serious games for ASD children regarding which skills they aim to develop, how their activities were operationalized, and which customization options they provide to users. Our results showed that a large number of serious games aimed at developing distinct skills in ASD children have been proposed, with their main focus being on social and socio-emotional skills. Nonetheless, for each skill we characterize the existing games according to their features, that is the platform they are developed for, I/O devices used, required users’ action, audiovisual elements, and number of players. We also identify strategies adopted in the games regarding specific features and skills that emerged from the analysis. Finally, our results highlight that offering broader customization options in the games could expand their applicability and utility to their users. This work provides a thorough examination of research on games for ASD children, contributing both to researchers interested in the topic, by identifying existing contributions and open issues for research, and to professionals interested in developing serious games for this public.

Abstract Accessibility--> inspection methods provide an important complement to user evaluations in the development of interactive systems. However, many inspection methods tend to focus on violations of guidelines and are limited in conveying the impact of such problems when delivering their results. Drawing from the theoretical framework of Semiotic Engineering of Human–Computer Interaction, this paper presents SIM-SR—Semiotic Inspection Method Mediated by Screen Reader and an investigation to collect indicators about the method’s applicability and insights it can generate. In order to assess its applicability, we conducted three case studies employing the method, analysing how aspects of accessibility and communicability were approached and results generated. Regarding SIM-SR insights, we used WCAG 2.1 criteria to discuss how communicative breakdowns relate to accessibility guidelines and their impact. Our results show that SIM-SR went beyond identifying guidelines violations and led evaluators to consider the impact of accessibility issues on the system’s communicability and different levels of communicative breakdowns that users with visual disabilities could experience during interaction.

Explorations into groupwork research have expanded over the years to encompass broader themes like human-centered computing, human-computer interaction, social computing, and human- centered data science, and other related contexts. Like the previous PACM:HCI volumes for Group Work (volumes 5 and 6), this volume contains the tradition of design fictions in addition to short- form and long-from research articles. The work presented in this issue spans a wide range of disciplines, methods, and theoretical foundations. Paper topics range from perceptions of justice and participation to using AI to increase inclusivity and participation to safety. Application domains were varied ranging from social media norms to internet safety to robotics to collaborative programming and beyond. Specific communities were also the focus of the research, including specific gender and ethnic groups to non-profits and other community groups.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been researched, practiced and taught around the world in diverse contexts. In this paper, we focus on Brazil and its particular context. We interviewed thirteen professors to investigate their approach in introductory HCI courses within computing undergraduate courses. This paper reports a portion of this analysis, focusing on the content being taught, and comparing it to national and international guidelines. Our results show that most professors use a project-centered approach in the course, balancing theory and practice. Semiotics and accessibility are strong influences in our context. No international guidelines mention any semiotic approach to HCI, although they are usually more detailed than national guidelines. International guidelines provide a list of topics together with a list of learning outcomes, while national guidelines are more focused on topics. We contribute to the HCI community by providing an analysis of the Brazilian context.

Recently, curation practices start to develop in GitHub, where developers systematically put efforts to select, evaluate, and organize existing artifacts for the purposes of preservation and future use in software development. Curation practices in social media sites, such as Twitter and Pinterest, have been investigated, raising questions about the nature of collaborative curation in a professional/product-oriented site. In this study, we identify and characterize curation projects hosted on GitHub, and compare curation projects with software projects to study how this practice takes place and how it is different from the original use of GitHub. We find that curation has emerged as a highly popular category of GitHub project, which is directed to learning and professional development, and curation practice leverages collaborative tools and practices native to GitHub. Although curation projects and software projects use the same set of activities for development, they are different from each other in terms of the quantity of each type of activity performed by developers.

One of the challenges faced by Facebook users is that privacy settings change not only the visibility of the information, but also impact actions other users can take on a piece of information. These actions on their turn can also create changes to the visibility of that piece of information, sometimes granting access to people originally unintended by the user who posted the information. In this paper we investigate how a simulator that allows users to explore the different situations that can result from privacy settings may support them in anticipating the impact of their decisions. To do so, we have implemented a privacy setting simulator prototype, and evaluated it through a qualitative case-study which involved 12 regular Facebook users. Our findings indicate that the simulator improved users understanding of the effects of their privacy settings and allowed them to identify misunderstandings they had about the visibility of their information.

We present GreenMeter, a tool for assessing the quality and recommending tags for Web 2.0 content. Its goal is to improve tag quality and the effectiveness of various information services (e.g., search, content recommendation) that rely on tags as data sources. We demonstrate an implementation of GreenMeter for the popular Last.fm application.

This paper explores the use of Semiotic Engineering theory in the design of different interfaces for the control of a mobile robot. Based on a set of sign classes for human-robot interaction, we have elaborated a common interaction model and designed different interfaces for controlling an e-puck robot, a small sized mobile robot used for education and research. We implemented three interfaces using different technologies (desktop, Tablet PC, and handheld) and tested them with a group of users, in order to evaluate if the sign classes and their representations were adequate and also the differences perceived in the use of diverse interaction technologies.

The nature and depth of technological interference on social activities online are not fully understood. We discuss one such type of interference—compulsory institutionalization, the process by which non-institutionalized face-to-face informal groups, who typically adopt implicit norms tacitly accepted by members, must create a set of explicit group structuring rules with very specific computer-encoded meanings and abide by them when they migrate to online group environments. In societies where rules can be bypassed in view of more highly valued social norms, like the Brazilian society, compulsory institutionalization may undermine experiences that are highly valued to face-to-face groups. In this article, we contrast the findings of our study with a Brazilian group of potential groupware users and those of our semiotic inspection of YahooGroups, SmartGroups and MSN Groups. We show how the systems may frustrate the group's expectations and limit their interaction online. Reflecting on the causes and consequences of compulsory institutionalization, we conclude that the social–technical gap in group technologies may not be possible to bridge completely, and that the fulcrum of scientific research in this area may include some new aspects.