Showing papers on "User interface published in 2015"

ClustVis: a web tool for visualizing clustering of multivariate data using Principal Component Analysis and heatmap

Abstract: The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a widely used method of reducing the dimensionality of high-dimensional data, often followed by visualizing two of the components on the scatterplot. Although widely used, the method is lacking an easy-to-use web interface that scientists with little programming skills could use to make plots of their own data. The same applies to creating heatmaps: it is possible to add conditional formatting for Excel cells to show colored heatmaps, but for more advanced features such as clustering and experimental annotations, more sophisticated analysis tools have to be used. We present a web tool called ClustVis that aims to have an intuitive user interface. Users can upload data from a simple delimited text file that can be created in a spreadsheet program. It is possible to modify data processing methods and the final appearance of the PCA and heatmap plots by using drop-down menus, text boxes, sliders etc. Appropriate defaults are given to reduce the time needed by the user to specify input parameters. As an output, users can download PCA plot and heatmap in one of the preferred file formats. This web server is freely available at http://biit.cs.ut.ee/clustvis/.

IoT based monitoring and control system for home automation

Abstract: The project proposes an efficient implementation for IoT (Internet of Things) used for monitoring and controlling the home appliances via World Wide Web. Home automation system uses the portable devices as a user interface. They can communicate with home automation network through an Internet gateway, by means of low power communication protocols like Zigbee, Wi-Fi etc. This project aims at controlling home appliances via Smartphone using Wi-Fi as communication protocol and raspberry pi as server system. The user here will move directly with the system through a web-based interface over the web, whereas home appliances like lights, fan and door lock are remotely controlled through easy website. An extra feature that enhances the facet of protection from fireplace accidents is its capability of sleuthing the smoke in order that within the event of any fireplace, associates an alerting message and an image is sent to Smartphone. The server will be interfaced with relay hardware circuits that control the appliances running at home. The communication with server allows the user to select the appropriate device. The communication with server permits the user to pick out the acceptable device. The server communicates with the corresponding relays. If the web affiliation is down or the server isn't up, the embedded system board still will manage and operate the appliances domestically. By this we provide a climbable and price effective Home Automation system.

Digital downloading jukebox system with user-tailored music management, communications, and other tools

Abstract: A digital downloading jukebox system including a mechanism for delivering custom services to a recognized user, including services for creating playlists, communicating with others, accessing other features, etc. is provided. In some exemplary embodiments, after a user is recognized, the jukebox system allows users to access a special front-end via an Internet-enabled device or on an actual jukebox. Then, the user may, for example, create playlists, share songs with friends, send messages to friends, and access other value-added content. Such a system preferably learns about networks of friends, and enables managers to send similar messages to regular customers and/or others known to the system. In some exemplary embodiments, changes via a first user interface on a first device are reflected on second user interface on other properly-configured devices.

Who Tweets with Their Location? Understanding the Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and the Use of Geoservices and Geotagging on Twitter

Abstract: In this paper we take advantage of recent developments in identifying the demographic characteristics of Twitter users to explore the demographic differences between those who do and do not enable location services and those who do and do not geotag their tweets. We discuss the collation and processing of two datasets—one focusing on enabling geoservices and the other on tweet geotagging. We then investigate how opting in to either of these behaviours is associated with gender, age, class, the language in which tweets are written and the language in which users interact with the Twitter user interface. We find statistically significant differences for both behaviours for all demographic characteristics, although the magnitude of association differs substantially by factor. We conclude that there are significant demographic variations between those who opt in to geoservices and those who geotag their tweets. Not withstanding the limitations of the data, we suggest that Twitter users who publish geographical information are not representative of the wider Twitter population.

The Internet of Things Has a Gateway Problem

Abstract: The vision of an Internet of Things (IoT) has captured the imagination of the world and raised billions of dollars, all before we stopped to deeply consider how all these Things should connect to the Internet. The current state-of-the-art requires application-layer gateways both in software and hardware that provide application-specific connectivity to IoT devices. In much the same way that it would be difficult to imagine requiring a new web browser for each website, it is hard to imagine our current approach to IoT connectivity scaling to support the IoT vision. The IoT gateway problem exists in part because today's gateways conflate network connectivity, in-network processing, and user interface functions. We believe that disentangling these functions would improve the connectivity potential for IoT devices. To realize the broader vision, we propose an architecture that leverages the increasingly ubiquitous presence of Bluetooth Low Energy radios to connect IoT peripherals to the Internet. In much the same way that WiFi access points revolutionized laptop utility, we envision that a worldwide deployment of IoT gateways could revolutionize application-agnostic connectivity, thus breaking free from the stove-piped architectures now taking hold. In this paper, we present our proposed architecture, show example applications enabled by it, and explore research challenges in its implementation and deployment.

KeYmaera X: An Axiomatic Tactical Theorem Prover for Hybrid Systems

Abstract: KeYmaera X is a theorem prover for differential dynamic logic ( Open image in new window ), a logic for specifying and verifying properties of hybrid systems Reasoning about complicated hybrid systems models requires support for sophisticated proof techniques, efficient computation, and a user interface that crystallizes salient properties of the system KeYmaera X allows users to specify custom proof search techniques as tactics, execute these tactics in parallel, and interface with partial proofs via an extensible user interface

Context-specific user interfaces

Abstract: Context-specific user interfaces for use with a portable multifunction device are disclosed. The methods described herein for context-specific user interfaces provide indications of time and, optionally, a variety of additional information. Further disclosed are non-transitory computer-readable storage media, systems, and devices configured to perform the methods described herein.

The effect of web interface features on consumer online purchase intentions

Abstract: Article history: Received January 25, 2015 Received in revised format 28 March 2015 Accepted 3 May 2015 Available online May 4 2015 Information and communication technology plays essential role for people’s day-to-day business activities. People receive most of their knowledge by processing, recording and transferring necessary information through surfing Internet websites. Internet as an essential part of information technology (IT) has grown remarkably. Nowadays, there have been significant amount of efforts in Iran for developing e-commerce. This paper studies the effects of environmental internet features on internet purchase intention. The study divides internet environment into demographic and technologic parts and, for studying each of them, many features are investigated such as internet connection speed, connectivity model, web browser, type of payments, user’s income, user’s education, user’s gender, frequency of online usage per week and users’ goal for using internet. Using Logistic regression technique, the study has determined a meaningful effects of income, education, connection type, browser and goal on consumers’ behavior. Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 5 © 201

Learning to interpret natural language commands through human-robot dialog

Abstract: Intelligent robots frequently need to understand requests from naive users through natural language. Previous approaches either cannot account for language variation, e.g., keyword search, or require gathering large annotated corpora, which can be expensive and cannot adapt to new variation. We introduce a dialog agent for mobile robots that understands human instructions through semantic parsing, actively resolves ambiguities using a dialog manager, and incrementally learns from human-robot conversations by inducing training data from user paraphrases. Our dialog agent is implemented and tested both on a web interface with hundreds of users via Mechanical Turk and on a mobile robot over several days, tasked with understanding navigation and delivery requests through natural language in an office environment. In both contexts, We observe significant improvements in user satisfaction after learning from conversations.

Reverse Engineering Mobile Application User Interfaces with REMAUI (T)

Abstract: When developing the user interface code of a mobile application, in practice a big gap exists between the digital conceptual drawings of graphic artists and working user interface code. Currently, programmers bridge this gap manually, by reimplementing the conceptual drawings in code, which is cumbersome and expensive. To bridge this gap, we introduce the first technique to automatically Reverse Engineer Mobile Application User Interfaces (REMAUI). On a given input bitmap REMAUI identifies user interface elements such as images, texts, containers, and lists, via computer vision and optical character recognition (OCR) techniques. In our experiments on 488 screenshots of over 100 popular third-party Android and iOS applications, REMAUI-generated user interfaces were similar to the originals, both pixel-by-pixel and in terms of their runtime user interface hierarchies. REMAUI's average overall runtime on a standard desktop computer was 9 seconds.

Communicating Directionality in Flying Robots

Abstract: Small flying robots represent a rapidly emerging family of robotic technologies with aerial capabilities that enable unique forms of assistance in a variety of collaborative tasks. Such tasks will necessitate interaction with humans in close proximity, requiring that designers consider human perceptions regarding robots flying and acting within human environments. We explore the design space regarding explicit robot communication of flight intentions to nearby viewers. We apply design constraints to robot flight behaviors, using biological and airplane flight as inspiration, and develop a set of signaling mechanisms for visually communicating directionality while operating under such constraints. We implement our designs on two commercial flyers, requiring little modification to the base platforms, and evaluate each signaling mechanism, as well as a no-signaling baseline, in a user study in which participants were asked to predict robot intent. We found that three of our designs significantly improved viewer response time and accuracy over the baseline and that the form of the signal offered tradeoffs in precision, generalizability, and perceived robot usability. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.1.2 [Models and Principles]: User/Machine Systems—human factors, software psychology; H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces— evaluation/methodology, usercentered design General Terms Design, Human Factors

Immersive Analytics

Abstract: Immersive Analytics is an emerging research thrust investigating how new interaction and display technologies can be used to support analytical reasoning and decision making. The aim is to provide multi-sensory interfaces that support collaboration and allow users to immerse themselves in their data in a way that supports real-world analytics tasks. Immersive Analytics builds on technologies such as large touch surfaces, immersive virtual and augmented reality environments, sensor devices and other, rapidly evolving, natural user interface devices. While there is a great deal of past and current work on improving the display technologies themselves, our focus in this position paper is on bringing attention to the higher-level usability and design issues in creating effective user interfaces for data analytics in immersive environments.

Method and apparatus for a file sharing and synchronization system

Abstract: A computer-implemented method is provided for managing and sharing picture files. In one embodiment of the present invention, the method comprises providing a server platform and providing a datastore on the server platform for maintaining full resolution copies of the files shared between a plurality of sharing clients. A synchronization engine is provided on the server platform and is configured to send real-time updates to a plurality of sharing clients when at least one of the sharing clients updates or changes one of said files. A web interface may also be provided that allows a user to access files in the datastore through the use of a web browser.

“I want my robot to look for food”: Comparing Kindergartner’s programming comprehension using tangible, graphic, and hybrid user interfaces

Abstract: In recent years, educational robotics has become an increasingly popular research area. However, limited studies have focused on differentiated learning outcomes based on type of programming interface. This study aims to explore how successfully young children master foundational programming concepts based on the robotics user interface (tangible, graphical, hybrid) taught in their curriculum. Thirty-five Kindergarten students participated in a 9-week robotics curriculum using the LEGO WeDo robotics construction kit and the Creative Hybrid Environment for Robotic Programming (CHERP) programming language. A mixed methods data collection approach was employed, including qualitative observational data from the classrooms, as well as quantitative mid- and post-test assessments of students’ programming knowledge using CHERP. The findings show little association between user interface and programming comprehension, although there may be an order-affect when introducing user interfaces. Implications for best practices when introducing programming in early childhood settings are discussed.

RecomMetz: A context-aware knowledge-based mobile recommender system for movie showtimes

Abstract: Recommender systems are used to provide filtered information from a large amount of elements. They provide personalized recommendations on products or services to users. The recommendations are intended to provide interesting elements to users. Recommender systems can be developed using different techniques and algorithms where the selection of these techniques depends on the area in which they will be applied. This paper proposes a recommender system in the leisure domain, specifically in the movie showtimes domain. The system proposed is called RecomMetz, and it is a context-aware mobile recommender system based on Semantic Web technologies. In detail, a domain ontology primarily serving a semantic similarity metric adjusted to the concept of “packages of single items” was developed in this research. In addition, location, crowd and time were considered as three different kinds of contextual information in RecomMetz. In a nutshell, RecomMetz has unique features: (1) the items to be recommended have a composite structure (movie theater + movie + showtime), (2) the integration of the time and crowd factors into a context-aware model, (3) the implementation of an ontology-based context modeling approach and (4) the development of a multi-platform native mobile user interface intended to leverage the hardware capabilities (sensors) of mobile devices. The evaluation results show the efficiency and effectiveness of the recommendation mechanism implemented by RecomMetz in both a cold-start scenario and a no cold-start scenario.

Vehicles and vehicle systems for providing access to vehicle controls, functions, environment and applications to guests/passengers via mobile devices

Abstract: A vehicle including one or more computers to interface with electronics of the vehicle to access status data for systems of the vehicle and to make input settings to one or more of the systems. The vehicle includes wireless communication circuitry for providing connection to the Internet and to one or more wireless devices when paired with the vehicle. An occupancy sensor of the vehicle is configured to interface with the one or more computers of the vehicle to identify occupancy of seats of the vehicle. A processor of the one or more computers of the vehicle is configured to execute instructions to receive data from a wireless device that is paired with the vehicle. The data is used to identify a seat in the vehicle that is associated with a passenger. The processor executes instructions to provide data to a user interface accessed by the wireless device to expose a plurality of systems of the vehicle. The plurality of systems include systems that relate to an environment zone in which the seat is located in the vehicle. The user interface further includes controls to enable input of settings to one or more of the plurality of vehicle systems to make changes to the one or more of the plurality of vehicle systems. The changes made relate to one or more of the plurality of systems that relate to the environment zone of the seat.

An Architecture for Online Affordance-based Perception and Whole-body Planning

Abstract: The DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials held in December 2013 provided a landmark demonstration of dexterous mobile robots executing a variety of tasks aided by a remote human operator using only data from the robot's sensor suite transmitted over a constrained, field-realistic communications link. We describe the design considerations, architecture, implementation, and performance of the software that Team MIT developed to command and control an Atlas humanoid robot. Our design emphasized human interaction with an efficient motion planner, where operators expressed desired robot actions in terms of affordances fit using perception and manipulated in a custom user interface. We highlight several important lessons we learned while developing our system on a highly compressed schedule.

Select drag and drop operations on video thumbnails across clip boundaries

Abstract: A computer-implemented method includes displaying, within a user interface in a digital media system, a media pane, and a project pane, displaying, within the media pane, a thumbnail group representing a media item, the thumbnail group comprising one or more thumbnails, enabling a user to select, from the thumbnail group, a segment of the media item, and enabling a user to transfer the selected segment to the project pane.

FlashRelate: extracting relational data from semi-structured spreadsheets using examples

Abstract: With hundreds of millions of users, spreadsheets are one of the most important end-user applications. Spreadsheets are easy to use and allow users great flexibility in storing data. This flexibility comes at a price: users often treat spreadsheets as a poor man's database, leading to creative solutions for storing high-dimensional data. The trouble arises when users need to answer queries with their data. Data manipulation tools make strong assumptions about data layouts and cannot read these ad-hoc databases. Converting data into the appropriate layout requires programming skills or a major investment in manual reformatting. The effect is that a vast amount of real-world data is "locked-in" to a proliferation of one-off formats. We introduce FlashRelate, a synthesis engine that lets ordinary users extract structured relational data from spreadsheets without programming. Instead, users extract data by supplying examples of output relational tuples. FlashRelate uses these examples to synthesize a program in Flare. Flare is a novel extraction language that extends regular expressions with geometric constructs. An interactive user interface on top of FlashRelate lets end users extract data by point-and-click. We demonstrate that correct Flare programs can be synthesized in seconds from a small set of examples for 43 real-world scenarios. Finally, our case study demonstrates FlashRelate's usefulness addressing the widespread problem of data trapped in corporate and government formats.

Soylent: a word processor with a crowd inside

Abstract: This paper introduces architectural and interaction patterns for integrating crowdsourced human contributions directly into user interfaces. We focus on writing and editing, complex endeavors that span many levels of conceptual and pragmatic activity. Authoring tools offer help with pragmatics, but for higher-level help, writers commonly turn to other people. We thus present Soylent, a word processing interface that enables writers to call on Mechanical Turk workers to shorten, proofread, and otherwise edit parts of their documents on demand. To improve worker quality, we introduce the Find-Fix-Verify crowd programming pattern, which splits tasks into a series of generation and review stages. Evaluation studies demonstrate the feasibility of crowdsourced editing and investigate questions of reliability, cost, wait time, and work time for edits.

Last-Meter Smart Grid Embedded in an Internet-of-Things Platform

Abstract: The customer domain of the smart grid naturally blends with smart home and smart building systems, but typical proposed approaches are “distributor-centric” rather than “customer-centric,” undermining user acceptance, and are often poorly scalable. To solve this problem, we propose a detailed architecture and an implementation of a “last-meter” smart grid-the portion of the smart grid on customer premises-embedded in an internet-of-things (IoT) platform. Our approach has four aspects of novelty and advantages with respect to the state of the art: 1) seamless integration of smart grid with smart home applications in the same infrastructure; 2) data gathering from heterogeneous sensor communication protocols; 3) secure and customized data access; and 4) univocal sensor and actuator mapping to a common abstraction layer on which additional concurrent applications can be built. A demonstrator has been built and tested with purposely-developed ZigBee smart meters and gateways, a distributed IoT server, and a flexible user interface.

Geolocation-based pictographs

Abstract: A system and method for geolocation-based pictographs are provided. In example embodiments, a current geolocation of a user device is determined. A pictograph is identified based on the current geolocation of the user device. The identified pictograph is presented on a user interface of the user device.

Open and Low-Cost Virtual and Remote Labs on Control Engineering

Abstract: This paper presents an open course in the University Network of Interactive Laboratories, which offers several virtual and remote laboratories on automatic control, accessible to anyone. All the details on one of these labs (a two electric coupled drives system that allows performing control practices in a 2 $\times $ 2 MIMO system with industrial applications) and the activities that can be performed with it are given. We use a low-cost solution for developing the virtual and remote labs shared in this open course, based on the use of a free authoring tool Easy Java/Javascript Simulations (EJsS) for building the laboratories’ user interfaces and a cheap development platform board (BeagleBone Black). The virtual and remote labs are deployed into a free Learning Management System (Moodle) Web environment that facilitates their management and maintenance.

SUPOR: precise and scalable sensitive user input detection for android apps

Abstract: While smartphones and mobile apps have been an essential part of our lives, privacy is a serious concern. Previous mobile privacy related research efforts have largely focused on predefined known sources managed by smartphones. Sensitive user inputs through UI (User Interface), another information source that may contain a lot of sensitive information, have been mostly neglected. In this paper, we examine the possibility of scalably detecting sensitive user inputs from mobile apps. In particular, we design and implement SUPOR, a novel static analysis tool that automatically examines the UIs to identify sensitive user inputs containing critical user data, such as user credentials, finance, and medical data. SUPOR enables existing privacy analysis approaches to be applied on sensitive user inputs as well. To demonstrate the usefulness of SUPOR, we build a system that detects privacy disclosures of sensitive user inputs by combining SUPOR with off-the-shelf static taint analysis We apply the system to 16,000 popular Android apps, and conduct a measurement study on the privacy disclosures. SUPOR achieves an average precision of 97.3% and an average recall of 97.3% for sensitive user input identification. SUPOR finds 355 apps with privacy disclosures and the false positive rate is 8.7%. We discover interesting cases related to national ID, username/password, credit card and health information.

Apparatus and method for controlling internet of things devices

Abstract: An electronic device including a memory is disclosed. The memory stores instructions controlling the electronic device to acquire information on a first external electronic device, access a server storing a software program related to the first external electronic device, receive at least a portion of the software program related to the first external electronic device from the server through the communication interface, install the at least a portion of the software program, transmit the at least a portion of the information on the first external electronic device and/or at least one part of the received at least a portion of the software program to a second external electronic device, and provide a user interface to the display using the installed at least a portion of the software program. The user interface is used for the second external electronic device to perform an operation related to the first external electronic device.

Foldio: Digital Fabrication of Interactive and Shape-Changing Objects With Foldable Printed Electronics

Abstract: Foldios are foldable interactive objects with embedded input sensing and output capabilities. Foldios combine the advantages of folding for thin, lightweight and shape-changing objects with the strengths of thin-film printed electronics for embedded sensing and output. To enable designers and end-users to create highly custom interactive foldable objects, we contribute a new design and fabrication approach. It makes it possible to design the foldable object in a standard 3D environment and to easily add interactive high-level controls, eliminating the need to manually design a fold pattern and low-level circuits for printed electronics. Second, we contribute a set of printable user interface controls for touch input and display output on folded objects. Moreover, we contribute controls for sensing and actuation of shape-changeable objects. We demonstrate the versatility of the approach with a variety of interactive objects that have been fabricated with this framework.

User-controllable personalization

Abstract: In this research we investigated the role of user controllability on personalized systems by implementing and studying a novel interactive recommender interface, SetFusion. We examined whether allowing the user to control the process of fusing or integrating different algorithms (i.e., different sources of relevance) resulted in increased engagement and a better user experience. The essential contribution of this research stems from the results of a user study (N=40) of controllability in a scenario where users could fuse different recommendation approaches, with the possibility of inspecting and filtering the items recommended. First, we introduce an interactive Venn diagram visualization, which combined with sliders, can provide an efficient visual paradigm for information filtering. Second, we provide a three-fold evaluation of the user experience: objective metrics, subjective user perception, and behavioral measures. Through the analysis of these metrics, we confirmed results from recent studies, such as the effect of trusting propensity on accepting the recommendations and also unveiled the importance of features such as being a native speaker. Our results present several implications for the design and implementation of user-controllable personalized systems. We explored user-controllable interfaces as extension of traditional-ranked lists.We introduced SetFusion, a controllable interface with sliders and a Venn diagram.We conducted a controlled user study on online conference article recommendation.Our evaluation had three dimensions: users' perception, behavioral and IR metrics.Controllable interface had a positive effect influenced by users' characteristics.

System having an improved user interface for reading code symbols

Abstract: A system for reading code symbols includes a camera, a user interface system, and a processor communicatively coupled to the camera and the user interface system. The user interface system includes a visual display. The processor is configured for (i) capturing an image including a code symbol, (ii) displaying the image on the visual display, (iii) determining whether the code symbol in the image is readable by the processor, and (iv) displaying on the visual display a positive indicator overlaying the code symbol in the image when the processor determines that the code symbol in the image is readable by the processor. The processor is further configured for reading the code symbol in the image in response to a selection input received from the user interface system.