User Interaction Requirements Research Articles

Challenges and Opportunities of Biometric User Authentication in the Age of IoT: A Survey

While the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smartwatches, provide a range of services from managing financial transactions to monitoring smart homes, these devices often lead to gateways for malicious access to a user’s cyber-physical space. Biometric-based authentications are becoming popular to secure IoT devices and provide other services. However, when to use what type of biometrics remains challenging due to various factors, including sensing and computing requirements, user interaction requirements, stability over time, and application scenarios, among others. Unlike soft biometrics, e.g., gait, traditional biometrics, e.g., iris, are more stable over time but require active user input and robust sensing and computing, which limits their continuous adaptability to secure a user’s cyber-physical space. Additionally, the integration of new sensors to IoT devices brings opportunistic data types that can individually or in combination with other common biometrics to identify a user. There is a dearth of knowledge about the limitations and applications of new opportunistic biometrics and their combinations with existing biometrics obtained from single or multiple IoT-connected devices. Therefore, this article thoroughly discusses different biometrics that can be implemented on IoT devices to understand the potential of biometric authentications better.

Chirp-Loc: Multi-factor authentication via acoustically-generated location signatures

Context-based authentication has been proposed as a way to enable secure authentication with minimal or even no user interaction requirements by using sensor data to ensure the device being authenticated is in possession of the person initiating the authentication request. A key limitation of practically all context-based authentication systems is that they are vulnerable to context manipulation attacks where an attacker manipulates the environment to create a desired response in the sensor data. We contribute Chirp-Loc as a system that has been designed to improve the robustness of context-based authentication solutions against context-manipulation attacks. Chirp-Loc integrates an innovative approach based on room impulse response (RIR) to establish a location fingerprint that characterizes the physical environment instead of the ambient environment. We describe the design and development of an Android prototype of Chirp-Loc. We also conduct extensive accuracy and security analysis of Chirp-Loc by considering a multi-factor authentication solution that uses Chirp-Loc to verify the proximity of an authentication token, such as a smartphone. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that Chirp-Loc offers high degree of security and usability. Our work paves the way for improving the resilience of context-based authentication against attackers that manipulate the context information and offers a way to implement authentication systems that minimize user interaction demands while offering a high degree of security.

Playful Probes for Design Interaction with Machine Learning: A Tool for Aircraft Condition-Based Maintenance Planning and Visualisation

Aircraft maintenance is a complex domain where designing new systems that include Machine Learning (ML) algorithms can become a challenge. In the context of designing a tool for Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) in aircraft maintenance planning, this case study addresses (1) the use of Playful Probing approach to obtain insights that allow understanding of how to design for interaction with ML algorithms, (2) the integration of a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent for Human–AI collaboration in maintenance planning and (3) the visualisation of CBM indicators. Using a design science research approach, we designed a Playful Probe protocol and materials, and evaluated results by running a participatory design workshop. Our main contribution is to show how to elicit ideas for integration of maintenance planning practices with ML estimation tools and the RL agent. Through a participatory design workshop with participants’ observation, in which they played with CBM artefacts, Playful Probes favour the elicitation of user interaction requirements with the RL planning agent to aid the planner to obtain a reliable maintenance plan and turn possible to understand how to represent CBM indicators and visualise them through a trajectory prediction.

Design and Implementation of 3D Effect Web Page Based on JavaScript Technology

With the development of Internet technology, people's production and life are greatly influenced. Web design is widely used in Internet world. Web design and user experience are inseparable. In the pursuit of webpage layout and aesthetics, but also to add user interaction functions, Dynamic effects technology based on JavaScript can achieve user interaction requirements. The perfect combination of JavaScript dynamic effects and interactive features is the best way to achieve webpage effects. This paper expounds the application method of JavaScript, and studies the special effect application of JavaScript technology in webpages through examples.

Collaborative and ubiquitous mobile learning system prototype

Mobile learning applications utilise the advantages of mobile technologies to increase learning opportunities, mainly on an anytime, anywhere basis. The advancement of mobile technology has facilitated the development of numerous applications to improve students' learning experience and performance. Successful implementation of m-learning is highly dependent on learning context and environment awareness. This work presents a multiphase exploration of early phases responsible for defining and validating the m-learning context, and later phases based on context validation results achieved from the previous phases, involving the development and evaluation of a new m-learning context prototype. This new prototype proved to provide context-aware and ubiquitous learning services fulfilling several diverse user interaction levels and requirements.

Collaborative and ubiquitous mobile learning system prototype

Mobile learning applications utilise the advantages of mobile technologies to increase learning opportunities, mainly on an anytime, anywhere basis. The advancement of mobile technology has facilitated the development of numerous applications to improve students' learning experience and performance. Successful implementation of m-learning is highly dependent on learning context and environment awareness. This work presents a multiphase exploration of early phases responsible for defining and validating the m-learning context, and later phases based on context validation results achieved from the previous phases, involving the development and evaluation of a new m-learning context prototype. This new prototype proved to provide context-aware and ubiquitous learning services fulfilling several diverse user interaction levels and requirements.

Requirements for a Proposed Distributed Attention System for Supporting Awareness of Omissions in Healthcare

Noticing errors of omission can be challenging in complex, distributed processes. A prime example is outpatient care, where multiple distributed processes require attention. Teams must pay attention to patients currently in the clinic, to processes happening in the background, and to potential omissions in those processes. Detecting possible omissions may be supported with software, serving as a distributed attention system by guiding the team's attention to important areas. However, to ensure the software supports rather than disrupts attention, proper user requirements must be defined. This paper presents our study to identify high-level user interaction requirements for software planned to support attention to omissions in Chronic Heart Failure treatment. We interviewed outpatient clinic team members to identify information needs for addressing possible omissions, and how notifications should fit with team communication patterns. The findings are discussed in terms of high-level requirements for effective functioning of teams of humans and software agents.

Measuring the role of age in user performance during interaction with computers

The influence of aging on computer interaction has been widely analyzed in human---computer interaction research literature. Despite this, there are no age-based user maps that could support the user-interface customization. Studying the specific needs and constraints of these groups is crucial in order to adapt a user interface to the user's interaction requirements. This work studies the performance of a sample of participants on three different basic tasks (pointing, dragging and dropping, and text selection) and the influence of age for each of them. It is concluded that this influence differs between specific activities. A group profile map that can support automatic classification in the future has been obtained.

UACAP: A Unified Auxiliary Channel Authentication Protocol

Authenticating spontaneous interactions between devices and users is challenging for several reasons: the wireless (and therefore invisible) nature of device communication, the heterogeneous nature of devices, and lack of appropriate user interfaces in mobile devices, and the requirement for unobtrusive user interaction. The most promising approach that has been proposed in literature involves the exploitation of the so-called auxiliary channels for authentication to bridge the gap between usability and security. This concept has spawned the independent development of various authentication methods and research prototypes, that, unfortunately, remain hard to compare and interchange and are rarely available to potential application developers. We present a novel, unified cryptographic authentication protocol framework (UACAP) to unify these approaches on using auxiliary channels and analyze its security properties. This protocol and a selection of auxiliary channels aimed at authentication of mobile devices has been implemented and released in an open-source ubiquitous authentication toolkit (OpenUAT). We also present an initial user study evaluating four of these channels.

Disaster and exercise performance information collection tool: Capturing observations in four minutes or less

The objectives of the work described in this paper were to: (a) identify existing gaps in data collection, processing and dissemination across all types of emergencies; (b) build a tool that permits documentation, manipulation and propagation of relevant observations in emergency preparedness exercises or real-world incidents to inform critical decision makers in real time and to facilitate the elaboration of lessons learned, best practices and pioneering strategies for the management of future disasters; (c) validate the efficacy of the tool for collecting, processing and disseminating disaster-related information, through its integration in a series of exercises. The disaster and exercise performance information collection tool (DEPICT) was developed to address needs identified via the analysis of survey responses provided by representatives of military and civilian organisations with disaster response experience. Consensus discussions were held to identify criteria and operational parameters for the tool. As the development of DEPICT progressed, feedback and recommendations for improvements were provided to the developers, who incorporated the recommendations in successive iterations, resulting in increased refinements of the tool. DEPICT was subsequently tested for feasibility through operations-based exercises centred on catastrophic earthquakes in three diverse geographic locations of the USA. Feedback regarding DEPICT’s functional performance during the exercises was used to inform further refinements to the program. The authors developed the DEPICT software on a PHP platform to accomplish two goals: (1) offer a core that supports user interaction and data management requirements (eg data capture, transmission and storage); (2) present a user-friendly interface with a shallow learning curve to facilitate a better user experience. DEPICT is a user-friendly, web-based application that is accessible through various mobile web-enabled devices. The application allows responders, emergency planners and exercise evaluators to capture written and photographic field observations, on average, in four minutes or less per observation. These observations may be further processed or formatted offsite by analysts, prior to their submission for final exercise performance evaluation. Ultimately, the data form the basis of after-action reports, which, in turn, underpin future decision making and improved disaster response practices.

A User-centred Materials Selection Approach for Product Designers

In the materials selection process of user-centred design projects, the emphasis shifts from technology towards user-interaction aspects of products. Materials form the interface of the product with the user and influence the sense of quality, pleasantness of interaction, personality of the product, and the way it can be used. The human senses, as the interface of the user, play essential roles in this interaction. A new materials selection model has been created for the purpose of understanding the context in which materials are selected. The Materials Selection Activities (MSA) model describes the activities of product designers. It emphasizes the iterative character of the materials selection process, the relevance of creating a clear material profile and the role of information therein. Creating an effective material profile is not easy and a new technique has been developed to formulate a profile in the form of the required sensorial properties of the materials (the Materials in Products Selection (MiPS) technique). Four tools were developed to support the techniques, namely: 1) ‘question tool’, which goes through the sensorial aspects of materials during several phases of the user-product interaction; 2) ‘picture tool’, which brings pictures of product examples and the materials these products are made of into the discussion; 3) ‘sample tool’, which offers tangible material samples; and 4) ‘relation tool’, which enables technology-oriented material specialists to include user-interaction requirements in their material considerations and evaluations. The tools not only aid the discussions about user-interaction aspects of materials, but also support the translation of these into sensorial properties of materials.

Design and evaluation of a disaster preparedness logistics tool

The purpose of this article is to describe the development and testing of the Pediatric Emergency Decision Support System (PEDSS), a dynamic tool for pediatric victim disaster planning. This is a descriptive article outlining an innovative automated approach to pediatric decision support and disaster planning. Disaster Resource Centers and umbrella hospitals in Los Angeles County. The authors use a model set of hypothetical patients for our pediatric disaster planning approach. The authors developed the PEDSS software to accomplish two goals: (a) core that supports user interaction and data management requirements (e.g., accessing demographic information about a healthcare facility's catchment area) and (b) set of modules each addressing a critical disaster preparation issue. The authors believe the PEDSS tool will help hospital disaster response personnel produce and maintain disaster response plans that apply best practice pediatric recommendations to their particular local conditions and requirements.

Towards policy driven context aware differentiated services design and development

In the dynamic e-business environment, it is desirable for a service with different interfaces to meet the requirements of different users. Within the context of the currently available technologies, it is usual to make several unrelated services available, each of which supports a specific interaction path. However, as the number of users increases, such design makes it difficult to maintain the large number of services. In this paper an alternative service design method is proposed, ‘service differentiation’, which allows a single service to be differentiated with interface variation to meet the different interaction requirements. Inspired by the concept of abstraction and polymorphism in object oriented computing, service differentiation allows an ‘abstract business process’ class to be configured by policy, hence multiple business processes can be derived to meet different user interaction requirements.

Virtual environments for engineering applications

Virtual reality (VR), provides the user with an ego-centred human-computer interaction environment by presenting the data as a computer-generated 3D virtual environment. This enables the user to be immersed in this world via user position tracking devices and to interact with the data objects in the world in intuitive ways. This paper describes a selection of VR simulations for engineering applications implemented in CLRC which demonstrate the potential of VR interaction techniques to offer quicker and possibly better understanding of spatial relationships and temporal patterns inherent in large data sets. Two of the case studies have been implemented to support engineers communicate and review their designs with scientists, managers and manufacturers and to plan their assembly and maintenance work in hazardous physical environments. The other two applications are visualisation case studies based on data sets generated by computational engineering simulations. The case studies are ‘real world’ applications, involving end-users of large or complex data sets. Insight gained into the user interaction requirements through the implementation and user comments is guiding ongoing research and development activity and this is discussed briefly.

Adaptation in IMMPS as a decision making process

Intelligent Multimedia Presentation Systems (IMMPS) are characterised by their capability to dynamically adapt at run-time, based on the state of several aspects of user-computer interaction, such as the user profile, task and information characteristics, etc. In this paper, we treat adaptation as a decision making process, and propose the employment of established techniques from the domain of Decision Making to assist this process. It is argued that, following this approach, the adaptation process can be easily modified, customised and re-used in different application domains and for different user interaction requirements. The designer is enabled to incorporate different design strategies, which can be dynamically and automatically modified, according to the run-time requirements of the system. The application of the proposed approach is exemplified in the media/modalities allocation process.