Intuitive Interaction Research Articles

Linking Design Intention and Users' Interpretation through Image Schemas

Usability is often defined as the ease of use of a product but this definition does not capture other important characteristics related to the product design as being effective, efficient, engaging, errorfree and easy to learn. Usability is not only about measuring how people use a product but more importantly, it is about exploring the relationship between how designers have intended their products to be used and how users interpret these designs. Previous research has shown the feasibility of using image schemas to evaluate intuitive interactions. This paper extends previous research by proposing a method, which uses image schemas to evaluate usability by measuring the gap between design intention and users’ interpretations of the design. The design intention is extracted from the user manual while the way users interpret the design features is captured using direct observation, think aloud protocol and a structured questionnaire. The proposed method is illustrated with a case study involving 42 participants. The results show close correlation between usability and the distance between design intent and users’ interpretation.

A Neural Network Approach to Intention Modeling for User-Adapted Conversational Agents.

Spoken dialogue systems have been proposed to enable a more natural and intuitive interaction with the environment and human-computer interfaces. In this contribution, we present a framework based on neural networks that allows modeling of the user's intention during the dialogue and uses this prediction to dynamically adapt the dialogue model of the system taking into consideration the user's needs and preferences. We have evaluated our proposal to develop a user-adapted spoken dialogue system that facilitates tourist information and services and provide a detailed discussion of the positive influence of our proposal in the success of the interaction, the information and services provided, and the quality perceived by the users.

Hybrid reality-based user experience and evaluation of a context-aware smart home

A smart home is considered as a new environment that can apply the use of Internet-of-Things (IoT). For that reason, the realization of the smart home requires the seamless integration among humans, physical objects, and user interactions. However, this accomplishment is currently unrealistic and expensive, considering the need to construct different types of physical smart homes and the need to evaluate them through the various aspects of user experiences. Thus, virtual reality is widely used for the preliminary test and pre-evaluation. However, there is little work to systematically evaluate the user experiences such as usability, natural and intuitive interaction between human and physical objects, and usefulness. This paper proposes a hybrid reality-based user experience and evaluation of a context-aware smart home. The user experience is provided by the integration of egocentric virtual reality and exocentric augmented reality. Furthermore, to make a smart home environment more natural and realistic, a world-in-miniature (WIM) of the smart home has been constructed where various kinds of tangible and physical smart home activities are allowed for prototyping a number of appliances, sensors, and human-physical object interactions. To evaluate the proposed approach, both qualitative and quantitative experiments are performed and analyzed. The proposed approach aims to provide developers and end users or consumers a useful tool for understanding and experiencing the smart home environment. Prior to the development of a physical smart home environment, it is essential for developers and designers to validate smart home services regarding context and visual awareness. Furthermore, it must be used for consumers or future residents to evaluate the smart home such that developers provide more customer-oriented environment and capture related problems before constructing the home.

A mobile interface for navigating hierarchical information space

This paper presents ERELT (Enhanced Radial Edgeless Tree), a tree visualization approach on modern mobile devices. ERELT is designed to offer a clear visualization of any tree structure with intuitive interaction. Such visualization can assist users in interacting with a hierarchical structure such as a media collection, file system, etc.In the ERELT visualization, a subset of the tree is displayed at a time. The displayed tree size depends on the maximum number of tree elements that can be put on the screen while maintaining clarity. Users can quickly navigate to the hidden parts of the tree through touch-based gestures. We have conducted a user study to evaluate this visualization for a music collection. The study results show that this approach reduces the time and effort in navigating tree structures for exploration and search tasks.

Individual differences in reading social intentions from motor deviants.

As social animals, it is crucial to understand others’ intention. But is it possible to detect social intention in two actions that have the exact same motor goal? In the present study, we presented participants with video clips of an individual reaching for and grasping an object to either use it (personal trial) or to give his partner the opportunity to use it (social trial). In Experiment 1, the ability of naïve participants to classify correctly social trials through simple observation of short video clips was tested. In addition, detection levels were analyzed as a function of individual scores in psychological questionnaires of motor imagery, visual imagery, and social cognition. Results revealed that the between-participant heterogeneity in the ability to distinguish social from personal actions was predicted by the social skill abilities. A second experiment was then conducted to assess what predictive mechanism could contribute to the detection of social intention. Video clips were sliced and normalized to control for either the reaction times (RTs) or/and the movement times (MTs) of the grasping action. Tested in a second group of participants, results showed that the detection of social intention relies on the variation of both RT and MT that are implicitly perceived in the grasping action. The ability to use implicitly these motor deviants for action-outcome understanding would be the key to intuitive social interaction.

A weakly supervised geodesic level set framework for interactive image segmentation

Interactive image segmentation is growingly useful for selecting objects of interest in images, facilitating spatially localized media manipulation especially on touch screen devices. We present a robust and efficient approach for segmenting image with less and intuitive user interaction. Our approach combines geodesic distance information with the flexibility of level set methods in energy minimization, leveraging the complementary strengths of each to promote accurate boundary placement and strong region connectivity while requiring less user interaction. We harness weakly supervised segment annotation to maximize the user-provided prior knowledge. This leads to a seed generation algorithm which enables image object segmentation without user-provided background seeds. We demonstrate that our approach is less sensitive to seed placement and better at edge localization, whilst requiring less user interaction, compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

I1.3: Invited Paper: Immersive Applications based on Depth‐Imaging and 3D‐Sensing Technology

The recent developments in depth‐imaging and 3D computer vision techniques allow efficient and real‐time acquisition, reconstruction, and understanding of the 3D environment, which enable an array of life‐like and immersive applications. We show here an excerpt of some of the key technologies spanning sensors, algorithms, and system integration based on depth imaging and 3D sensing technology. The small form factor, the low power and the real‐time depth image capture are the key enablers. We talk here about emerging trends in this burgeoning field and new enabled applications that include immersive and interactive gaming, virtual home and office decoration, virtual cloth fitting, video conferencing with custom background and synthetic environment, education and training, and numerous other new entertainment and productivity usages with natural and intuitive interactions.

Video Object Retrieval by Trajectory and Appearance

The prevalence of video recording capability, either on surveillance systems or mobile devices, has contributed to the popularity of video data. As a result, video management has become relatively more important than before and, in particular, video retrieval has been one of the main issues in this regard. Traditional video retrieval systems take texts as the inputs to look for similar information from the title, annotation or embedded textual data of a video, in a way that is very similar to the keyword search adopted by a common search engine. However, the lack of visual information specification during a search often makes the result rather inaccurate or even useless. For this reason, video retrieval systems using images or videos as the inputs have also been proposed; nevertheless, the associated ambiguity and complexity have made the implementation of such systems relatively difficult and, therefore, those systems are not as successful as desired. To address this, in this paper, we propose to perform a video retrieval of a desired object through the inputs of its trajectory and/or appearance , together with the help of a 3-D graphical user interface for more intuitive interactions, so that more satisfactory results can be achieved. We firmly believe that such a framework could serve as the foundation for behavior analysis used in many surveillance systems.

증강현실 환경하에서 RFID/NFC 기반의 탠저블 인터페이스를 활용한 디지털 콘텐츠 상호작용

Received 3 December 2014; received in revised form 3 March 2015; accepted 3 March 2015ABSTRACTRadio-Frequency Identification (RFID) or Near Field Communication (NFC) technology hasmany advantages over other visual interfaces since it does not require line-of-sight alignment,can identify multiple tags simultaneously, and does not destroy the integrity of original objects.In addition, smart devices such as smartphone and smartpad have NFC/RFID readers which canprovide mobile and natural interactions with digital and physical contents. Augmented realityhas an excellent visual interaction capability with digital contents in a real environment byembedding digital contents into the physical world. In this paper, we propose a new approach todigital content interactions using RFID/NFC-based tangible interfaces in augmented reality envi-ronments that utilize invisible interfaces in addition to marker-based visual interfaces. By com-bining the advantages of invisible and visual interfaces, more intuitive interactions with digitalcontents can be provided, which can remove the difficulty of using typical AR paddles that arewidely used in AR interactions. In particular, a semantic AR ontology is defined to providemore convenient interactions. Through the semantic ontology-based inferencing, physical query-ing and filtering are effectively supported. We will show the effectiveness and advantage of theproposed approach by demonstrating implementation results.Key Words:Augmented Reality, Digital Content Interaction, NFC, RFID, Semantic Ontology,Tangible Interface

Movement transformation on multi-touch devices: Intuition or instructional preparation?

Multi-touch technology is a key part of computer interaction today, yet little is known about the distinction between direct and indirect input devices in terms of intuitive interaction. An experimental study aims to identify the difficulties of interaction with indirect multi-touch devices by applying the action regulation theory and the principle of movement transformation to common computer tasks involving gesture utilization. An analysis of the data acquired from 54 subjects working with an Apple Magic Trackpad implies that gestures on indirect multi-touch devices are not utilized intuitively without instructions that bypass conceptual difficulties of indirect gesture usage. It is shown that gesture use influences product assessment measured by User Experience questionnaires and that prior experience with direct multi-touch devices does not influence gesture usage or product assessment. We advise that product developers utilize video instructions to create a sense of intuitive interaction.

Mouse Operations using Finger Tracking

Computers are the electronic brains of the era, technology’s greatest gift to mankind. The functioning of these electronic brains is controlled by humans. Interaction between the computer and humans is possible with the help of various devices such as keyboard, mouse, joystick, light pen, track ball, barcode reader, etc. Of these devices, the mouse performs various crucial functions in the most user-friendly way. This paper conveys work to implement the same functionalities without the use of external, bulky devices. Hand gestures can be used for natural and intuitive interaction of the user with a computer [1]. This paper intends to replicate different hand gestures as mouse functionalities using image processing tools and techniques.

Arabic Dialogue System for Hotel Reservation based on Natural Language Processing Techniques

In this paper, we present an Arabic dialogue system (also referred to as a conversational agent) intended to interact with hotel customers and generate responses about reserving a hotel room and other services. The system uses text-based natural language dialogue to navigate customers to the desired answers. We describe the two main modules used in our system: the parser and the dialogue manager. The parser is based on the Government and Binding theory. Customers can inquire about room availability, hotel services and negotiate a desired reservation. We report an experiment with 500 volunteers unfamiliar with the system in a real environment. The users were asked to interact with the system and then to judge the dialogues as very bad, neutral, good, or very We found that 66.92% of the dialogues were judged to be very and 92.3% were judged to be good or very good. These results confirm the viability of using an Arabic dialogue system to tackle the problem of interactive Arabic dialogues. Finally, we discuss future directions for enhancing our dialogue system with more sophisticated and intuitive interaction.

SMOOVS: Towards calibration-free text entry by gaze using smooth pursuit movements

Gaze-based text spellers have proved useful for people with severe motor diseases, but lack acceptance in general human-computer interaction. In order to use gaze spellers for public displays, they need to be robust and provide an intuitive interaction concept. However, traditional dwell- and blink-based systems need accurate calibration which contradicts fast and intuitive interaction. We developed the first gaze speller explicitly utilizing smooth pursuit eye movements and their particular characteristics. The speller achieves sufficient accuracy with a one-point calibration and does not require extensive training. Its interface consists of character elements which move apart from each other in two stages. As each element has a unique track, gaze following this track can be detected by an algorithm that does not rely on the exact gaze coordinates and compensates latency-based artefacts. In a user study, 24 participants tested four speed-levels of moving elements to determine an optimal interaction speed. At 300 px/s users showed highest overall performance of 3.34 WPM (without training). Subjective ratings support the finding that this pace is superior.

Robotic Application in Neurosurgery Using Intelligent Visual and Haptic Interaction

Today, the complexity and high technical requirements of neurosurgical operations are so demanding that modern robotic achievements and advances of accompanied technologies appear as the immanent means, which can significantly improve neurosurgical practice. A novel robotic system (RONNA –RObotic NeuroNAvigation) for application in neurosurgery is presented. The RONNA consists of two conventional articulated robot arms with a total of 13 degrees of freedom. A rigid and accurate robot is used for precise targeting of planned operating points and a compliant robot is used as operative assistant. A distinctive marker was developed for the purpose of precise localization and registration of the patient’s head. A novel visual calibration method is presented. The developed dual arm neurosurgical system enables flexible and reliable application with embedded behaviour based control providing intuitive interaction with surgical team and new possibilities compared to the existing surgical robot solutions.

One-Step Distortion Simulation of Pulsed Laser Welding with Multi-Physics Information

Today, the complexity and high technical requirements of neurosurgical operations are so demanding that modern robotic achievements and advances of accompanied technologies appear as the immanent means, which can significantly improve neurosurgical practice. A novel robotic system (RONNA –RObotic NeuroNAvigation) for application in neurosurgery is presented. The RONNA consists of two conventional articulated robot arms with a total of 13 degrees of freedom. A rigid and accurate robot is used for precise targeting of planned operating points and a compliant robot is used as operative assistant. A distinctive marker was developed for the purpose of precise localization and registration of the patient’s head. A novel visual calibration method is presented. The developed dual arm neurosurgical system enables flexible and reliable application with embedded behaviour based control providing intuitive interaction with surgical team and new possibilities compared to the existing surgical robot solutions. 22 refs. (Received in March 2014, accepted in October 2014. This paper was with the authors 1 month for 1 revision.)

Recursive process of motion recognition and generation for action-based interaction

To integrate humanoid robots into daily life, it is necessary to develop the robots that can understand human behaviors and generate human-like behaviors adaptive to their human partners. In previous robotics research, frameworks of encoding human behaviors into motion primitive models, recognizing observed human actions as the motion primitives, and synthesizing motions from the motion primitive models have been developed. The bidirectional process of motion recognition and motion synthesis can be helpful to establish intuitive behavioral interaction between humans and robots. This paper proposes a novel approach to realizing a robot intelligence for the human–robot interaction. This approach symbolizes perception and actions using hidden Markov models. The recursive process of motion recognition and synthesis based on the hidden Markov models enables a robot to understand that the human partner recognizes robot’s actions and to perform actions accordingly. The proposed framework was applied to an example of human–robot interactions where robot walks through a group of several partners. This application was tested on captured human behaviors, and the validity of this framework is demonstrated through the experiments.

What is Intuitive Interaction? Balancing Users' Performance and Satisfaction with Natural User Interfaces

Designers of natural user interfaces are faced with several challenges when creating interaction models for controlling applications, including the wide range of possible input actions and the lack of affordances, which they can use to design controls. In order to contribute to the development of design guidelines in this design space, we conducted an exploratory, mixed methods study. We investigated three top-down approaches to designing intuitive interaction mappings for a whole body system implemented with camera vision. These were metaphoric, isomorphic and ‘everyday’or conventional. In order to identify some of the benefits and limitations of each approach, we compared the designs based on measures of usability, intuitiveness and engagement with the material represented in the system. From our study, we found that while the metaphoric design enhanced users’ performance at completing tasks, the lack of discoverability of the interaction model left them feeling incompetent and dissatisfied. We found that the isomorphic design enabled users to focus on tasks rather than learning how to use the system. Conversely, designs based on previous conventions had to be learned, had a time cost for the learning and negatively impacted users’ engagement with content. For tasks and controls that can be designed based on an image schematic input action, users performed most accurately with the metaphoric design. There are benefits and limitations to each approach to designing to support intuitive interaction. We conclude with preliminary design considerations, suggest ways to balance performance with high user satisfaction depending on contextual design goals and question a single definition of intuitive intuition within whole body interface design.

Intuitive and counterintuitive noncovalent interactions of aromatic π regions with the hydrogen and the nitrogen of HCN

We have investigated intuitive and counterintuitive complex formation between eight aromatic molecules and HCN. In four of the former, the π regions had negative electrostatic potentials; in the other four, the π regions had positive potentials. Each aromatic molecule was allowed to interact through its π region with both the hydrogen (positive potential) of HCN and also the nitrogen (negative potential). In eight cases, therefore, interaction was intuitively favorable (positive/negative) while in the other eight, attractive interaction would be counterintuitive on the basis of the ground state electrostatic potentials (positive/positive or negative/negative). The intuitive interactions all led to bound complexes, and five of the counterintuitive did as well. The Hellmann–Feynman theorem was invoked to help explain the formation of the five counterintuitive complexes in terms of polarization/dispersion. Very good correlations were obtained, for the intuitive and also the counterintuitive complexes, between the computed interaction energies and values predicted solely on the basis of the most positive and the most negative electrostatic potentials in the π regions and on the HCN.

An Experience Perspective on Intuitive Interaction: Central Components and the Special Effect of Domain Transfer Distance

An Experience Perspective on Intuitive Interaction: Central Components and the Special Effect of Domain Transfer Distance

Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Intuitive Interaction Based on Image Schemas

Intuitive interaction is an important aspect of usability in interface design. This paper contributes to the research in this area by proposing a conceptual framework for evaluating intuitive interaction based on image schemas. The framework comprises four phases: goal identification, image schemas extraction, analysis and assessment. It quantifies intuitive interaction by comparing the image schemas envisaged by the designer of a product with those used by its users. The proposed framework is evaluated through a study involving 42 participants completing a set task with a product. The study identified the image schemas, which were correctly used in accordance with the designer's intent and those that were incorrectly used and contributed to the difficulties that many participants experienced. The inter-rater reliability and empirical validity were examined. The proposed framework provides a structured approach to usability testing by enabling both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of intuitive interaction.