Towards an Inclusive Walk-in Customer Service Facility

It is estimated that 15% of the world's population has some sort of physical or sensory disability, according to the World Health Organization (2011). In an era marked by the rising of new technological devices, the inclusion of this public in digital environments still faces many obstacles, what frequently lets it out of this informational society. In this sense, Companhia Energética de Minas Gerais – CEMIG, one of the biggest Brazilian electrical energy utility company, has started to design and deploy a high-tech, user-friendly, inclusive customer service facility aimed at rendering a wide range of services by means of several gadgets such as self-service kiosks, tablets, and interactive panels and tables to help address the digital divide. For doing so, the applications to be developed and run on those devices need to be carefully studied and previously tested in order to meet the needs and expectations of the target audience. This paper describes the process of designing these innovative solutions to meet the demands of this new service channel.

HCI and E-Learning

This chapter developed a framework for evaluating e-learning for use in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). A systems approach was used in the study; input, processes and output. It discussed the different assumptions about how people learn; behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism. Further, it examined the common threads in the definitions of e-learning and the literature on evaluation of e-learning models. Nine categories of evaluation of e-learning were identified but five were reviewed because the remaining four overlapped. Two separate evaluations were reviewed under each category, making a total of ten reviews. The reviews showed that the evaluations were not conducted in the same way even within the same category making comparisons difficult. The framework was developed from the highlights in the review. The developed framework can be used to evaluate different e-learning modules along common lines making it easy to compare evaluations. It is hoped that over the next few years, a consistency in evaluations of e-learning would be achieved for use in HCI.

Using a Design Science Research Approach to Develop a HCI Artifact for Designing Web Interfaces

Interface signs are the communication cues of web interfaces, through which users interact. Examples of interface signs are small images, navigational links, buttons and thumbnails. Although intuitive interface signs are crucial elements of a good user interface (UI), prior research ignored these in UI design and usability evaluation process. This chapter outlines how a design science research (DSR) approach is used to develop a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) artifact (semiotic framework) for design and evaluation of user-intuitive web interface signs. This chapter describes how the principles and guidelines of DSR approach are adopted, while performing the activities of the DSR process model to construct the artifact.

Organizing Contextual Data in Context Aware Systems

Context aware systems strive to facilitate better usability through advanced devices, interfaces and systems in day to day activities. These systems offer smart service discovery, delivery and adaptation all based on the current context. A context aware system must gather the context prior to context inference. This gathered context is then stored in a tagged, platform independent format using Extensible Markup Language (XML) or Web Ontology Language (OWL). The hierarchy is enforced for fast lookup and contextual data organization. Researchers have proposed and implemented different contextual data organizations a large number of which has been reviewed in this chapter. The chapter also identifies the tactics of contextual data organizations as evident in the literature. A qualitative comparison of these structures is also carried out to provide reference to future research.

Augmented Reality for Smart Tourism in Religious Heritage Itineraries

Pilgrimages and travel for other religious reasons are two of the major drivers of human mobility. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can contribute to sharing knowledge about religious heritage with tourists, residents, and religious communities. ICT innovations that help individuals find information and acquire knowledge about cultural heritage can bring new experiences and sensations to tourists and residents, in general, and to those who have accessibility problems, in particular. These innovations include augmented reality, location-based services, social networks, gamification, and intelligent interfaces. This paper focuses on religious and spiritual routes and itineraries, presenting a religious tourism experience model that allows tourists to acquire additional knowledge about cultural and religious heritage, based on technological architecture using intelligent human-computer interactions displayed on personal mobile devices. This approach expands personal and spiritual experiences when travelers visit religious heritage sites associated with itineraries.

Sixth Sense Technology

In this chapter, the authors discuss a unique technology known as the Sixth Sense Technology, highlighting the future opportunities of such technology in integrating the digital world with the real world. Challenges in implementing such technologies are also discussed along with a review of the different possible implementation approaches. This review is performed by exploring the different inventions in areas similar to the Sixth Sense Technology, namely augmented reality (AR), computer vision, image processing, gesture recognition, and artificial intelligence and then categorizing and comparing between them. Lastly, recommendations are discussed for improving such a unique technology that has the potential to create a new trend in human-computer interaction (HCI) in the coming years.

PRHOLO

In the globalized world, possessing good products may not be enough to reach potential clients unless creative marketing strategies are well delineated. In this context, public relations are also important when it comes to capture the client's attention, making the first contact between the clients and the company's products, while being persuasive enough to make them confident that the company has the right products to fit their needs. Three virtual public relations installations were purposed in this chapter, combining technology with a human like public relations ability, capable of interacting with potential clients located in front of the installation, at angles of up to 57º (degrees), 180º and 360º, respectively. From one to several Microsoft Kinects were used to develop the three interaction models, which allows tracking and recognition of users' gestures and positions (heat map), sound sources, voice commands and face and body extraction of the user interacting with the installation.

Interactive/Automated Method to Count Bacterial Colonies

Counting of bacterial colonies on agar plates is a routine practice to get a rough estimate of the number of viable cells in a sample. The number of colonies in a culture is predominantly manually counted to calculate the concentration of bacteria in the original broth; however, manual counting can be tedious, time-consuming and imprecise. Automation of colony counting has been of increasing interest for many decades, and these methods have been shown to be more consistent than manual counting. Significant limitations of many algorithms used in automated systems are their inability to recognize overlapping colonies as distinct and to count colonies on the plate boundary. This study proposes an interactive counting system and a fully automated system using image processing which overcomes these problems. The proposed system is capable to reduce the manpower and time required for counting while taking account colonies both around the central area and boundary areas of the dish. These systems are part of an application to count colonies based in a mobile phone camera.

Robotic Assistive System

Stroke is the leading cause of disability that influences the quality of people's daily life. As such, an effective method is required for post-stroke rehabilitation. Research has shown that a robot is a good rehabilitation alternative where conventional robotic assistive system is encoded program by the robot expertise. The major drawback of this approach is that the lack of voluntary movement of the patient may affect the proficiency of the recovery process. Ideally, the robotic assistive system should recognize the intended movement and assist the patient to perform and make the training exercises more effective for recovery process. The electromyography based robotics assistive technology would enable the stroke patients to control the robot movement, according to the user's own strength of natural movement. This chapter briefly discusses the establishment of mathematical models based on artificial intelligent techniques that maps the surface electromyography (sEMG) signals to estimated joint torque of elbow for robotic assistive system.

Developments of Serious Games in Education

As Human Computer Interaction technologies evolve, they are supporting the generation of innovative solutions in a broad range of domains. Among them, Serious Games are defined as new type of computer game that is capable of stimulating users to learn, by playing and competing against themselves, against other users or against a computer application. While it could be applied to a broad range of fields and ages, these games are becoming especially relevant in educational contexts and for the most recent generation of students that is growing in a new technological environment, very different from the one we had some years ago. However, in order to become fully accepted as a teaching/learning tool in both formal and informal contexts, this technology has still to overcome several challenges. Given these considerations, this chapter makes a state-of-the-art review of several works that were done in this field, followed by the description of two real world projects, helping to understand the applicability of this technology, but also its inherent challenges.