This book introduces the concept of the wise home. Whilst smart homes focus on automation technologies, forcing users to deal with complex and incomprehensible control and programming procedures, the wise home is different. By going beyond intelligence (or smartness) the wise home puts technology in the background and supports explicit (enhanced user-experience) as well as implicit (artificial intelligence) interaction adequate to the end-user's needs. The theoretical basis of the wise home is explored and examples for its application for future living are presented based on empirical studies and field work carried out by the author. Principles of HCI and the meaning of the home from differing scientific perspective are discussed and a research model (based on the concept of user experience (UX)) and iterations is introduced. This has resulted in field deployment guides being produced through a systematic development process. The Future Home is Wise, not Smart will be essential reading to home system developers, designers and researchers, responsible for smart home deployment or Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) who will get insights on how to follow a novel approach in developing and adapting smart home systems to their users' needs. Students with an interest in software design for pervasive systems will benefit by receiving information on how to develop and customise systems for the specific needs of living environments.

Readers seeking to gain a handle on the internet's global expansion will find this book rich in scholarly foundations combined with cutting-edge discussion of emerging ICTs and services and the complex societal contexts in which they are embedded. To explore possibilities to the fullest extent, a sociotechnical systems approach is employed, focusing on the interplay of technical, social, cultural, political, and economic dynamics to explore alternative futures (ones that are not part of the dominant discourse about the internet). These shared perspectives are not well addressed elsewhere in current discussions. Awareness of these dynamics, and the fluidity of the future, is important, as humankind moves forward into the uncertain future. Due to the sociotechnical complexity of the Internet, policymakers, businesspeople, and academics worldwide have struggled to keep abreast of developments. This volume's approach is intended to stimulate dialogue between academics and practitioners on a topic that will affect most aspects of human life in the near-term future.

This thesis focuses on the problem of optimizing the quality of network multimedia services. This problem spans multiple domains, from subjective perception of multimedia quality to computer networks management. The work done in this thesis approaches the problem at different levels, developing methods for modeling the subjective perception of quality based on objectively measurable parameters of the multimedia coding process as well as the transport over computer networks. The modeling of subjective perception is motivated by work done in psychophysics, while using Machine Learning techniques to map network conditions to the human perception of video services. Furthermore, the work develops models for efficient control of multimedia systems operating in dynamic networked environments with the goal of delivering optimized Quality of Experience. Overall this thesis delivers a set of methods for monitoring and optimizing the quality of multimedia services that adapt to the dynamic environment of computer networks in which they operate.

This book explores novel aspects of social robotics, spoken dialogue systems, human-robot interaction, spoken language understanding, multimodal communication, and system evaluation. It offers a variety of perspectives on and solutions to the most important questions about advanced techniques for social robots and chat systems. Chapters by leading researchers address key research and development topics in the field of spoken dialogue systems, focusing in particular on three special themes: dialogue state tracking, evaluation of human-robot dialogue in social robotics, and socio-cognitive language processing. The book offers a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in both academia and industry whose work involves advanced interaction technology and who are seeking an up-to-date overview of the key topics. It also provides supplementary educational material for courses on state-of-the-art dialogue system technologies, social robotics, and related research fields.

The book gives an introduction into the theory and practice of the transdisciplinary field of Character Computing, introduced by Alia El Bolock. The latest scientific findings indicate that "One size DOES NOT fit all" in terms of how to design interactive systems and predict behavior to tailor the interaction experience. Emotions are one of the essential factors that influence people's daily experiences; they influence decision making and how different emotions are interpreted by different individuals. For example, some people may perform better under stress and others may break. Building upon Rosalind Picard's vision, if we want computers to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have and express emotions and how different characters perceive and react to these emotions, hence having richer and truly tailored interaction experiences. Psychological processes or personality traits are embedded in the existing fields of Affective and Personality Computing. However, this book is the first that systematically addresses this including the whole human character; namely our stable personality traits, our variable affective, cognitive and motivational states as well as our morals, beliefs and socio-cultural embedding. The book gives an introduction into the theory and practice of the transdisciplinary field of Character Computing. The emerging field leverages Computer Science and Psychology to extend technology to include the whole character of humans and thus paves the way for researchers to truly place humans at the center of any technological development. Character Computing is presented from three main perspectives: Profiling and sensing the character Leveraging characters to build ubiquitous character-aware systems Investigating how to extend Artificial Intelligence to create artificial characters

This invaluable text/reference investigates the state of the art in approaches to building, monitoring, managing, and governing smart cities. A particular focus is placed on the distributed computing environments within the infrastructure of such cities, including issues of device connectivity, communication, security, and interoperability. A selection of experts of international repute offer their perspectives on current trends and best practices, and their suggestions for future developments, together with case studies supporting the vision of smart cities based on the Internet of Things (IoT). Topics and features: examines the various methodologies relating to next-level urbanization, including approaches to security and privacy relating to social and legal aspects; describes a recursive and layered approach to modeling large-scale resource management systems for self-sustainable cities; proposes a novel architecture for hybrid vehicular wireless sensor networks, and a pricing mechanism for the management of natural resources; discusses the challenges and potential solutions to building smart city surveillance systems, applying knowledge-based governance, and adopting electric vehicles; covers topics on intelligent distributed systems, IoT, fog computing paradigms, big data management and analytics, and smart grids; reviews issues of sustainability in the design of smart cities and healthcare services, illustrated by case studies taken from cities in Japan, India, and Brazil. This illuminating volume offers a comprehensive reference for researchers investigating smart cities and the IoT, students interested in the distributed computing technologies used by smart living systems, and practitioners wishing to adopt the latest security and connectivity techniques in smart city environments.

This handbook provides a unique and in-depth survey of the current state-of-the-art in software engineering, covering its major topics, the conceptual genealogy of each subfield, and discussing future research directions. Subjects include foundational areas of software engineering (e.g. software processes, requirements engineering, software architecture, software testing, formal methods, software maintenance) as well as emerging areas (e.g., self-adaptive systems, software engineering in the cloud, coordination technology). Each chapter includes an introduction to central concepts and principles, a guided tour of seminal papers and key contributions, and promising future research directions. The authors of the individual chapters are all acknowledged experts in their field and include many who have pioneered the techniques and technologies discussed. Readers will find an authoritative and concise review of each subject, and will also learn how software engineering technologies have evolved and are likely to develop in the years to come. This book will be especially useful for researchers who are new to software engineering, and for practitioners seeking to enhance their skills and knowledge.

This book examines the principles of and advances in personalized task recommendation in crowdsourcing systems, with the aim of improving their overall efficiency. It discusses the challenges faced by personalized task recommendation when crowdsourcing systems channel human workforces, knowledge, skills and perspectives beyond traditional organizational boundaries. The solutions presented help interested individuals find tasks that closely match their personal interests and capabilities in a context of ever-increasing opportunities of participating in crowdsourcing activities. In order to explore the design of mechanisms that generate task recommendations based on individual preferences, the book first lays out a conceptual framework that guides the analysis and design of crowdsourcing systems. Based on a comprehensive review of existing research, it then develops and evaluates a new kind of task recommendation service that integrates with existing systems. The resulting prototype provides a platform for both the field study and the practical implementation of task recommendation in productive environments.

Knowledge and Technology Management in Virtual Organizations: Issues, Trends, Opportunities and Solutions presents a collection of the most recent contributions in the areas of organization, knowledge, and technology management in the context of virtual enterprises. This book contains important and in-depth information on four dimensions: semantic, managerial, technological, and social. The semantic dimensions covered in this book are ontological and organizational approaches, concepts, organizational models, and knowledge management models. In respect to managerial dimensions, this book covers process management, integration management, relationship management, process integration, knowledge management, technology integration management, and information integration. ""Knowledge and Technology Management in Virtual Organizations: Issues, Trends, Opportunities and Solutions"" presents the technological dimension by explaining the infrastructures and technologies to support technology and information integration standards and protocols. Lastly, this title highlights the social dimension, including human resources management, human resources integration, social issues, social impact, social requirements, and communities of knowledge.

This book summarizes the results of Design Thinking Research carried out at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA and at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. Offering readers a closer look at Design Thinking, its innovation processes and methods, the book covers topics ranging from how to design ideas, methods and technologies, to creativity experiments and wicked problem solutions, to creative collaboration in the real world, and the interplay of designers and engineers. But the topics go beyond this in their detailed exploration of Design Thinking and its use in IT systems engineering fields, or even from a management perspective. The authors show how these methods and strategies actually work in companies, introduce new technologies and their functions, and demonstrate how Design Thinking can influence such unexpected topics as marriage. Furthermore, readers will learn how special-purpose Design Thinking can be used to solve wicked problems in complex fields. Thinking and devising innovations are fundamentally and inherently human activities - so is Design Thinking. Accordingly, Design Thinking is not merely the result of special courses nor of being gifted or trained: it's a way of dealing with our environment and improving techniques, technologies and life.

This book investigates the functional adequacy as well as the affective impression made by feedback messages on mobile devices. It presents an easily adoptable experimental setup to examine context effects on various feedback messages and applies it to auditory, tactile and auditory-tactile feedback messages. This approach provides insights into the relationship between the affective impression and functional applicability of these messages as well as an understanding of the influence of unimodal components on the perception of multimodal feedback messages. The developed paradigm can also be extended to investigate other aspects of context and used to investigate feedback messages in modalities other than those presented. The book uses questionnaires implemented on a Smartphone, which can easily be adopted for field studies to broaden the scope even wider. Finally, the book offers guidelines for the design of system feedback.

This book presents an overview of the emerging field of emotion in videogame soundtracking. The emotional impact of music has been well-documented, particularly when used to enhance the impact of a multimodal experience, such as combining images with audio as found in the videogames industry. Soundtracking videogames presents a unique challenge compared to traditional composition (for example film music) in that the narrative of gameplay is non-linear - Player dependent actions can change the narrative and thus the emotional characteristics required in the soundtrack. Historical approaches to emotion measurement, and the musical feature mapping and music selection that might be used in video game soundtracking are outlined, before a series of cutting edge examples are given. These examples include algorithmic composition techniques, automated emotion matching from biosensors, motion capture techniques, emotionally-targeted speech synthesis and signal processing, and automated repurposing of existing music (for example from a players own library). The book concludes with some possibilities for the future.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (COOP 2014). The conference is a venue for multidisciplinary research contributing to the design, assessment and analysis of cooperative systems and their integration in organizations, public venues, and everyday life. COOP emerged from the European tradition of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Cognitive Ergonomics as practiced in France. These proceedings are a collection of 28 papers reflecting the variety of research activities in the field, as well as an increasing interest in investigating the use and design of ICT in all aspects of everyday life and society, and not merely in the workplace. The papers represent a variety of research topics, from healthcare to sustainable mobility to disaster response, in settings from all over the world. For the first time, the proceedings include papers presented in an Early-Career Researchers Track which was organized in order to give young researchers the opportunity to discuss their work with an international community. This collection of papers provides a picture of new developments and classic topics of research around cooperative systems, based on the principle that a deep knowledge of cooperative practices is a key to understanding technology impacts and producing quality designs. The articles presented will appeal to researchers and practitioners alike, as they combine an understanding of the nature of work with the possibilities offered by novel digital technologies.

Clear communication requires understanding readers from perspectives of technical communication, cognitive psychology, usability, human-computer interaction, information design, and information science. Designing and clearly communicating information involves understanding multiple perspectives of the readers experiences and understanding their motivations and rationale that drives their behavior. The research in diverse areas has all examined the issue though different lenses. However, there has not been an attempt at transforming the academic studies into a form accessible to technical communication students or to practitioners charged with designing and creating the content. Human-Information Interaction and Technical Communication: Concepts and Frameworks focuses on communicating information, not creating information. Developing information which clearly communicates and fits people s needs requires understanding how people think and what drives their decision processes. To help achieve that goal, this book works to provide practical knowledge based on a sound theoretical foundation for allowing people to engage in a meaningful dialogue as they make decisions with respect to designing that communication. Besides being a reference for the academic researcher or practicing technical communicator, it is written so it can be used as a reference for either a foundational or theories of technical communication course.

The goal of this book is to crystallize the emerging mobile computing technologies and trends into positive efforts to focus on the most promising solutions in services computing. Many toys built today are increasingly using these technologies together and it is important to understand the various research and practical issues. The book will provide clear proof that mobile technologies are playing an ever increasing important and critical role in supporting toy computing, which is a new research discipline in computer science. It is also expected that the book will further research new best practices and directions in toy computing. The goal of this book is to bring together academics and practitioners to describe the use and synergy between the above-mentioned technologies. This book is mainly intended for researchers and students working in computer science and engineering, and for toy industry technology providers, having particular interests in mobile services. The wide range of authors of this book will help the various communities understand both specific and common problems. This book facilities software developers and researchers to become more aware of this challenging research opportunity. As well, the book is soliciting shall provide valuable strategic outlook on the emerging toy industry.

Legal and ethical issues have become a standard part of engineering and business schools' curricula. This has not been the case for computer science or management information systems programs, although there has been increasing emphasis on the social skills of these students. This leaves a frightening void in their professional development. Information systems pose unique social challenges, especially for technical professionals who have been taught to think in terms of logic, structures and flows. Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology focuses on the human impact of information systems, including ethical challenges, social implications, legal issues, and unintended costs and consequences.

The rapid evolution of technology continuously changes the way people interact, work, and learn. By examining these advances, researchers can further optimize the various opportunities that technology provides. The Handbook of Research on Human Development in the Digital Age is a pivotal reference source presenting the latest scholarly research on the impact of technology on the population through different theories and perspectives. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of topics such as cyberbullying, mobile technology, and social skills development, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and practitioners seeking current research on new trends in technology that impact society.

This book presents current innovative, alternative and creative approaches that challenge traditional mechanisms in and across disciplines and industries targeting societal impact. A common thread throughout the book is human-centered, uni and multi-modal strategies across the range of human technologies, including sensing and stimuli; virtual and augmented worlds; games for serious applications; accessibility; digital-ethics and more. Focusing on engaging, meaningful, and motivating activities that at the same time offer systemic information on human condition, performance and progress, the book is of interest to anyone seeking to gain insights into the field, be they students, teachers, practicing professionals, consultants, or family representatives. By offering a wider perspective, it addresses the need for a core text that evokes and provokes, engages and demands and stimulates and satisfies.

Ever since the first successful International Cognitive Technology (CT) Conference in Hong Kong in August 1995, a growing concern about the dehumanising potential of machines, and the machining potential of the human mind, has pervaded the organisers' thinking. When setting up the agenda for the Second International CT Conference in Aizu, Japan, in August of 1997, they were aware that a number of new approaches had seen the light, but that the need to integrate them within a human framework had become more urgent than ever, due to the accelerating pace of technological and commercialised developments in the computer related fields of industry and research

What the present book does is re-emphasize the importance of the 'human factor' - not as something that we should 'also' take into account, when doing technology, but as the primary driving force and supreme aim of our technological endeavours. Machining the human should not happen, but humanising the machine should. "La Humacha" should replace the "Hemachine" in our thinking about these matters.

Highlights key research currently being undertaken within the field of telepresence, providing the most detailed account of the field to date, advancing our understanding of a fundamental property of all media - the illusion of presence; the sense of "being there" inside a virtual environment, with actual or virtual others. This collection has been put together by leading international scholars from America, Europe, and Asia. Together, they describe the state-of-the-art in presence theory, research and technology design for an advanced academic audience. Immersed in Media provides research that can help designers optimize presence for users of advanced media technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, collaborative social media, robotics, and artificial intelligence and lead us to better understand human cognition, emotion and behaviour.

Mobile devices allow users to remain connected with each other anytime and anywhere, but flaws and limitations in the design of mobile interfaces have often constituted frustrating obstacles to usability. Research and Design Innovations for Mobile User Experience offers innovative design solutions for mobile human-computer interfaces, addressing both challenges and opportunities in the field to pragmatically improve the accessibility of mobile technologies. Through cutting-edge empirical studies and investigative cases, this reference book will enable designers, developers, managers, and experts of mobile computer interfaces with the most up-to-date tools and techniques for providing their users with an outstanding mobile experience.

With the alarming rate of information technology changes over the past two decades, it is not unexpected that there is an evolution of the human side of IT that has forced many organizations to rethink their strategies in dealing with the human side of IT. People, just like computers, are main components of any information systems. And just as successful organizations must be willing to upgrade their equipment and facilities, they must also be alert to changing their viewpoints on various aspects of human behavior. New and emerging technologies result in human behavior responses which must be addressed with a view toward developing better theories about people and IT. IT Solutions Series: Humanizing Information Technology: Advice from Experts brings out a variety of views expressed by practitioners from corporate and public settings offer their experiences in dealing with the human byproduct of IT.

This contributed volume presents state-of-the-art advances in logistics theory in various fields as well as case studies. The book reports on a number of recently conducted studies in the Dinalog and the EffizienzCluster LogistikRuhr, thus bridging the gap between different perspectives of theoretical and applied research. A selection of theoretical topics, practical examples, case studies and project reports is presented in this volume. The editors carefully selected contributions from a wide variety of projects, which were carried out in both the Dinalog cluster and the Effizienzcluster LogistikRuhr. The contributions are grouped in five main sections, each representing key domains in the evolution of logistics and supply chain management: sustainability, urban logistics, value chain management, IT-based innovation, knowledge management. This book is intended for both researchers and practitioners in the field of logistics and supply chain management, to serve as an important source of information for further research as well as to stimulate further innovation.

This book introduces the latest visual effects (VFX) techniques that can be applied to game programming. The usefulness of the physicality-based VFX techniques, such as water, fire, smoke, and wind, has been proven through active involvement and utilization in movies and images. However, they have yet to be extensively applied in the game industry, due to the high technical barriers. Readers of this book can learn not only the theories about the latest VFX techniques, but also the methodology of game programming, step by step. The practical VFX processing techniques introduced in this book will provide very helpful information to game programmers. Due to the lack of instructional books about VFX-related game programming, the demand for knowledge regarding these high-tech VFXs might be very high.