A collection of works authored by leading scientists from the US and Russia, Human-Computer Interaction and Operators' Performance: Optimizing Work Design with Activity Theory describes applied and systemic-structural activity theory as it is used to study human-computer interaction, aviation, design, and training. Important from a theoretical and practical perspective, the book describes new analytical and experimental methods in the study of human work. The book facilitates the exchange of ideas between scientists working in ergonomics, human factors, human-computer interaction, industrial/organizational psychology, economics, management training, and other related areas. Drawing on their theoretical perspectives, the authors provide a comparative analysis of the various schools working in activity theory and a new approach to the study of human work derived from applied and systemic-structural activity theory. They cover special topics such as functional analysis of attention and classification of professions developed utilizing applied activity theory methods. In addition the book presents comparative analysis of work activity theory and applications. Representing the next significant step in the development of applied and systemic-structural activity theory, the book offers a balanced picture of theoretical and applied issues in the study of human work from general, applied, and systemic-structural activity theory points of view. It provides state-of-the art information and emphasizes its application to the study of human work while interacting with advanced technology.

This book collates the key security and privacy concerns faced by individuals and organizations who use various social networking sites. This includes activities such as connecting with friends, colleagues, and family; sharing and posting information; managing audio, video, and photos; and all other aspects of using social media sites both professionally and personally. In the setting of the Internet of Things (IoT) that can connect millions of devices at any one time, the security of such actions is paramount. Securing Social Networks in Cyberspace discusses user privacy and trust, location privacy, protecting children, managing multimedia content, cyberbullying, and much more. Current state-of-the-art defense mechanisms that can bring long-term solutions to tackling these threats are considered in the book. This book can be used as a reference for an easy understanding of complex cybersecurity issues in social networking platforms and services. It is beneficial for academicians and graduate-level researchers. General readers may find it beneficial in protecting their social-media-related profiles.

a short and accessible introduction to AI and computational creativity written by a leading expert

The book offers a unique model in an area where research is much-needed: the cognitive underpinnings, interactions and discursive effects of our evolving use of smartphones in everyday app-mediated communication, from text messages and gifs to images, video and social media apps The book gives attention to how both the particular interfaces of different apps and users' personal attributes influence the contexts and uses of smartphone communication The book includes insights from related disciplines such as media studies and sociology in an attempt to unpack the timeliest questions of our digitally mediated age This book will prove valuable for scholars and graduate students of communication, linguistics, pragmatics, media studies and sociology of mass media and will likewise engage upper-level undergraduate students

This book presents recent trends and enhancements in the convergence of immersive technology and smart cities. The authors discuss various domains such as medical education, construction, brain interface, interactive storytelling, edification, and journalism in relation to combining smart cities, IoT and immersive technologies. The book sets up a medium to promulgate insights and in depth understanding among experts in immersive technologies, IoT, HCI and associated establishments. The book also includes case studies, survey, models, algorithms, frameworks and implementations in storytelling, smart museum, medical education, journalism and more. Various practitioners, academicians and researchers in the domain contribute to the book.

This book presents a collection of results from the interdisciplinary research project "ELLI" published by researchers at RWTH Aachen University, the TU Dortmund and Ruhr-Universitat Bochum between 2011 and 2016. All contributions showcase essential research results, concepts and innovative teaching methods to improve engineering education. Further, they focus on a variety of areas, including virtual and remote teaching and learning environments, student mobility, support throughout the student lifecycle, and the cultivation of interdisciplinary skills.

The real-world value of knowledge in the mobile-device age. More people know who Khloe Kardashian is than who Rene Descartes was. Most can't find Delaware on a map, correctly spell the word occurrence, or name the largest ocean on the planet. But how important is it to fill our heads with facts? A few keystrokes can summon almost any information in seconds. Why should we bother learning facts at all? Bestselling author William Poundstone confronts that timely question in Head in the Cloud. He shows that many areas of knowledge correlate with the quality of our lives -- wealth, health, and happiness -- and even with politics and behavior. Combining Big Data survey techniques with eye-opening anecdotes, Poundstone examines what Americans know (and don't know) on topics ranging from quantum physics to pop culture. Head in the Cloud asks why we're okay with spelling errors on menus but not on resumes; why Fox News viewers don't know which party controls Congress; why people who know trivia make more money than those who don't; how individuals can navigate clickbait and media spin to stay informed about what really matters. Hilarious, humbling, and wildly entertaining, Head in the Cloud is a must-read for anyone who doesn't know everything.

" a must-read text that provides a historical lens to see how ubicomp has matured into a multidisciplinary endeavor. It will be an essential reference to researchers and those who want to learn more about this evolving field."

-From the Foreword, Professor Gregory D. Abowd, Georgia Institute of Technology

First introduced two decades ago, the term ubiquitous computing is now part of the common vernacular. Ubicomp, as it is commonly called, has grown not just quickly but broadly so as to encompass a wealth of concepts and technology that serves any number of purposes across all of human endeavor. While such growth is positive, the newest generation of ubicomp practitioners and researchers, isolated to specific tasks, are in danger of losing their sense of history and the broader perspective that has been so essential to the field 's creativity and brilliance.

Under the guidance of John Krumm, an original ubicomp pioneer, Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals brings together eleven ubiquitous computing trailblazers who each report on his or her area of expertise. Starting with a historical introduction, the book moves on to summarize a number of self-contained topics. Taking a decidedly human perspective, the book includes discussion on how to observe people in their natural environments and evaluate the critical points where ubiquitous computing technologies can improve their lives. Among a range of topics this book examines:

• How to build an infrastructure that supports ubiquitous computing applications
• Privacy protection in systems that connect personal devices and personal information
• Moving from the graphical to the ubiquitous computing user interface
• Techniques that are revolutionizing the way we determine a person 's location and understand other sensor measurements

While we needn t become expert in every sub-discipline of ubicomp, it is necessary that we appreciate all the perspectives that make up the field and understand how our work can influence and be influenced by those perspectives. This is important, if we are to encourage future generations to be as successfully innovative as the field 's originators.

This book addresses action research (AR), one of the main research methodologies used for academia-industry research collaborations. It elaborates on how to find the right research activities and how to distinguish them from non-significant ones. Further, it details how to glean lessons from the research results, no matter whether they are positive or negative. Lastly, it shows how companies can evolve and build talents while expanding their product portfolio. The book's structure is based on that of AR projects; it sequentially covers and discusses each phase of the project. Each chapter shares new insights into AR and provides the reader with a better understanding of how to apply it. In addition, each chapter includes a number of practical use cases or examples. Taken together, the chapters cover the entire software lifecycle: from problem diagnosis to project (or action) planning and execution, to documenting and disseminating results, including validity assessments for AR studies. The goal of this book is to help everyone interested in industry-academia collaborations to conduct joint research. It is for students of software engineering who need to learn about how to set up an evaluation, how to run a project, and how to document the results. It is for all academics who aren't afraid to step out of their comfort zone and enter industry. It is for industrial researchers who know that they want to do more than just develop software blindly. And finally, it is for stakeholders who want to learn how to manage industrial research projects and how to set up guidelines for their own role and expectations.

Imagine that you are the CEO of a software company. You know you compete in an environment that does not permit you to treat innovation as a secondary issue. But how should you manage your software innovation to get the most out of it? This book will provide you with the answer. Software innovation is multifaceted and the approaches used by companies can be very different. The team of authors that wrote this book took the assumption that there is no such thing as a universal software engineering process or innovation process. Some things work well for a certain company, others do not. The book is organized around what the authors call eight fundamental practice areas for innovation with software. Each practice area contains a number of activities that can help companies to master that practice area. It also contains industrial experience reports that illustrate the applicability of these practice areas in software companies and is structured in such a way that you can select and read only those practice areas that are relevant to your company. The book is written with an industrial target audience in mind. Its most important goal is to challenge companies by offering them a framework to become more innovation-driven, rather than engineering-driven. Intrigued? Here you will find details of what you and your company can do to understand, implement, and sustain continuous innovation.

'The Singularity' is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before.

A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die.

They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago - and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency.

Technology is our conduit of power. In our modern world, technology is the gatekeeper deciding who shall have and who shall have not. Either technology works for you or you work for technology. It shapes the human race just as much as we shape it. But where is this symbiosis going? Who provides the directions, the intentions, the goals of this human-machine partnership? Such decisions do not derive from the creators of technology who are enmeshed in their individual innovations. They neither come from our social leaders who possess only sufficient technical understanding to react to innovations, not to anticipate or direct their progress. Neither is there evidence of some omnipotent 'invisible hand,' the simple fact is that no one is directing this enterprise. In Mind, Machine and Morality, Peter Hancock asks questions about this insensate progress and has the temerity to suggest some cognate answers. He argues for the unbreakable symbiosis of purpose and process, and examines the dangerous possibilities that emerge when science and purpose meet. Historically, this work is a modern-day child of Bacon's hope for the 'Great Instauration.' However, unlike its forebear, the focus here is on human-machine systems. The emphasis centers on the conception that the active, extensive face of modern philosophy is technology. Whatever we are to become is bound up not only in our biology but critically in our technology also. And to achieve rational progress we need to articulate manifest purpose. This book is one step along the purposive road. Drawing together his many seminal writings on human-machine interaction and adapting these works specifically for this collection, Peter Hancock provides real food for thought, delighting readers with his unique philosophical perspective and outstanding insights. This is theoretical work of the highest order and will open minds accordingly.

This book provides critical commentary on key issues around virtual reality, using media technology as a tool to challenge perspectives for learning and understanding cultural diversities. With a focus on empathy, embodiment and ethics, the book interrogates the use of immersive technologies for formal and informal educational contexts. Taking a critical approach to discourses around emerging technology and learning, the book presents the idea that a new literacy is emerging and an emphasis on media and technology is needed in the context of education to explore and experience cultural diversities. Employing a personal reflexive narrative, the chapters highlight key issues through research and interviews with leading practitioners in the field. Understanding Virtual Reality will be of great interest to academics and students interested in the effects of immersive realities on the education experience, and to anyone keen on exploring the paradigm shift from entertainment to education.

Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Information Technology and Software Engineering presents selected articles from this major event, which was held in Beijing, December 8-10, 2012. This book presents the latest research trends, methods and experimental results in the fields of information technology and software engineering, covering various state-of-the-art research theories and approaches. The subjects range from intelligent computing to information processing, software engineering, Web, unified modeling language (UML), multimedia, communication technologies, system identification, graphics and visualizing, etc. The proceedings provide a major interdisciplinary forum for researchers and engineers to present the most innovative studies and advances, which can serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on information technology and software engineering. Prof. Wei Lu, Dr. Guoqiang Cai, Prof. Weibin Liu and Dr. Weiwei Xing all work at Beijing Jiaotong University.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Intelligence Science, ICIS 2018, held in Beijing China, in November 2018. The 44 full papers and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 85 submissions. They deal with key issues in intelligence science and have been organized in the following topical sections: brain cognition; machine learning; data intelligence; language cognition; perceptual intelligence; intelligent robots; fault diagnosis; and ethics of artificial intelligence.

This book provides an in-depth investigation on the psychological phenomenon "reactance" in the context of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The author argues that the complexity and autonomy of modern technology can sometimes be overwhelming and can then be perceived as a threat to freedom by its users, thereby diminishing acceptance. The book investigates if and how this is the case and provides strategies to regain the lost acceptance. Topics include relevance of reactance on HCI, triggers for reactance, consequences of reactance, measurement of reactance, and countermeasures to reactance.

This book introduces fundamental concepts and principles of 2D and 3D graphics and is written for undergraduate and postgraduate students of computer science, graphics, multimedia, and data science. It demonstrates the use of MATLAB (R) programming for solving problems related to graphics and discusses a variety of visualization tools to generate graphs and plots. The book covers important concepts like transformation, projection, surface generation, parametric representation, curve fitting, interpolation, vector representation, and texture mapping, all of which can be used in a wide variety of educational and research fields. Theoretical concepts are illustrated using a large number of practical examples and programming codes, which can be used to visualize and verify the results. Key Features: Covers fundamental concepts and principles of 2D and 3D graphics Demonstrates the use of MATLAB (R) programming for solving problems on graphics Provides MATLAB (R) codes as answers to specific numerical problems Provides codes in a simple copy and execute format for the novice learner Focuses on learning through visual representation with extensive use of graphs and plots Helps the reader gain in-depth knowledge about the subject matter through practical examples Contains review questions and practice problems with answers for self-evaluation

Get productive quickly with Pentaho Data Integration Key Features Take away the pain of starting with a complex and powerful system Simplify your data transformation and integration work Explore, transform, and validate your data with Pentaho Data Integration Book DescriptionPentaho Data Integration(PDI) is an intuitive and graphical environment packed with drag and drop design and powerful Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) capabilities. Given its power and flexibility, initial attempts to use the Pentaho Data Integration tool can be difficult or confusing. This book is the ideal solution. This book reduces your learning curve with PDI. It provides the guidance needed to make you productive, covering the main features of Pentaho Data Integration. It demonstrates the interactive features of the graphical designer, and takes you through the main ETL capabilities that the tool offers. By the end of the book, you will be able to use PDI for extracting, transforming, and loading the types of data you encounter on a daily basis. What you will learn Design, preview and run transformations in Spoon Run transformations using the Pan utility Understand how to obtain data from different types of files Connect to a database and explore it using the database explorer Understand how to transform data in a variety of ways Understand how to insert data into database tables Design and run jobs for sequencing tasks and sending emails Combine the execution of jobs and transformations Who this book is forThis book is for software developers, business intelligence analysts, and others involved or interested in developing ETL solutions, or more generally, doing any kind of data manipulation.

All-embracing manufacturing is a system that aims to dissolve the complexity of the manufacturing process and restore the inherent simplicity. It claims that production is very simple and flexible by nature. However, the complexity is a result of the production system approach which makes it rigid and therefore complex. All-embracing manufacturing introduces flexibility to production planning, it eliminates constraints, bottlenecks, and disruptions automatically while it restores the simplicity. No decision is made ahead of time, but only at the time of execution. It introduces technology as dominant part of manufacturing. It is a computer oriented system that imitates human behavior i.e. practically as any of us behave in daily personal life.

Management and enables them to deal with the demands and complexities of modern, agile systems/software/hardware development teams. The book examines the project/program manager beyond the concepts of leadership and aims to connect to employees' sense of identity. The text examines human psychological concepts such as "locus of control," which will help the manager understand their team members' view and how best to manage their "world" contributions. The authors cover new management tools and philosophies for agile systems/software/hardware development teams, with a specific focus on how this relates to engineering and computer science. This book also includes practical case studies. Discusses management skills needed as they relate to the advances in software development practices Examines how to manage an agile development team that includes teams across geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse backgrounds Embraces all of the aspects of modern management and leadership

Over the last decade, there has been a growing interest in human behavior analysis, motivated by societal needs such as security, natural interfaces, affective computing, and assisted living. However, the accurate and non-invasive detection and recognition of human behavior remain major challenges and the focus of many research efforts. Traditionally, in order to identify human behavior, it is first necessary to continuously collect the readings of physical sensing devices (e.g., camera, GPS, and RFID), which can be worn on human bodies, attached to objects, or deployed in the environment. Afterwards, using recognition algorithms or classification models, the behavior types can be identified so as to facilitate advanced applications. Although such traditional approaches deliver satisfactory performance and are still widely used, most of them are intrusive and require specific sensing devices, raising issues such as privacy and deployment costs. In this book, we will present our latest findings on non-invasive sensing and understanding of human behavior. Specifically, this book differs from existing literature in the following senses. Firstly, we focus on approaches that are based on non-invasive sensing technologies, including both sensor-based and device-free variants. Secondly, while most existing studies examine individual behaviors, we will systematically elaborate on how to understand human behaviors of various granularities, including not only individual-level but also group-level and community-level behaviors. Lastly, we will discuss the most important scientific problems and open issues involved in human behavior analysis.

Assistive technologies for the old and people with disabilities is now a very active field of research. It also constitutes a very profitable market (expected to reach US $60 billion p.a. by 2018). The book covers key aspects of this important field and provides guidelines for developing assistive technologies in smart environments. The book also presents the new paradigm of open innovation used by the most prolific research teams around the world. The latest developments in the field are given. Overall this book will be a reference for researchers, practitioners and engineers.

In this book, we have set up a unified analytical framework for various human-robot systems, which involve peer-peer interactions (either space-sharing or time-sharing) or hierarchical interactions. A methodology in designing the robot behavior through control, planning, decision and learning is proposed. In particular, the following topics are discussed in-depth: safety during human-robot interactions, efficiency in real-time robot motion planning, imitation of human behaviors from demonstration, dexterity of robots to adapt to different environments and tasks, cooperation among robots and humans with conflict resolution. These methods are applied in various scenarios, such as human-robot collaborative assembly, robot skill learning from human demonstration, interaction between autonomous and human-driven vehicles, etc. Key Features: Proposes a unified framework to model and analyze human-robot interactions under different modes of interactions. Systematically discusses the control, decision and learning algorithms to enable robots to interact safely with humans in a variety of applications. Presents numerous experimental studies with both industrial collaborative robot arms and autonomous vehicles.

Driving automation and autonomy are already upon us and the problems that were predicted twenty years ago are beginning to appear. These problems include shortfalls in expected benefits, equipment unreliability, driver skill fade, and error-inducing equipment designs. Designing Interaction and Interfaces for Automated Vehicles: User-Centred Ecological Design and Testing investigates the difficult problem of how to interface drivers with automated vehicles by offering an inclusive, human-centred design process that focusses on human variability and capability in interaction with interfaces. This book introduces a novel method that combines both systems thinking and inclusive user-centred design. It models driver interaction, provides design specifications, concept designs, and the results of studies in simulators on the test track, and in road going vehicles. This book is for designers of systems interfaces, interactions, UX, Human Factors and Ergonomics researchers and practitioners involved with systems engineering and automotive academics._ "In this book, Prof Stanton and colleagues show how Human Factors methods can be applied to the tricky problem of interfacing human drivers with vehicle automation. They have developed an approach to designing the human-automation interaction for the handovers between the driver and the vehicle. This approach has been tested in driving simulators and, most interestingly, in real vehicles on British motorways. The approach, called User-Centred Ecological Interface Design, has been validated against driver behaviour and used to support their ongoing work on vehicle automation. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested, or involved, in designing human-automation interaction in vehicles and beyond." Professor Michael A. Regan, University of NSW Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Contextual Design: Design for Life, Second Edition, describes the core techniques needed to deliberately produce a compelling user experience. Contextual design was first invented in 1988 to drive a deep understanding of the user into the design process. It has been used in a wide variety of industries and taught in universities all over the world. Until now, the basic CD approach has needed little revision, but with the wide adoption of handheld devices, especially smartphones, the way technology is integrated into people's lives has fundamentally changed. Contextual Design V2.0 introduces both the classic CD techniques and the new techniques needed to "design for life", fulfilling core human motives while supporting activities. This completely updated and revised edition is written in a clear, informal style without excessive jargon, and is the must-have book for any UX Design library. Users will find coverage of mobile devices and consumer and business products, all illustrated with new examples, case studies, and discussions on how to use CD with the agile development and other project requirements methods.