There are rhythms of action and response to all human-computer interactions. As we click, swipe, tap and sway to their beats, these rhythms intersect with the rhythms of our everyday lives. Perhaps they synchronize, perhaps they disrupt each other or maybe they dance together. Whatever their impact our experience of these rhythms will colour our experience of an interaction design. In playful interactive applications, rhythm is especially crucial because of the role it performs in building and maintaining the precarious spirit of play. Play involves movement and this movement has a rhythm that drives the experience. But what is the character of these rhythms of play and how can they be used in the design of interactive applications? These questions are the focus of this book. Drawing on traditions of rhythmic design practice in dance, performance, music and architecture, this book reveals key insights into practical strategies for designing playful rhythmic experience. With playful experiences now being incorporated into almost every type of computer application, interaction design practitioners and researchers need to develop a deeper understanding of the specific character of rhythms within play. Written from a designer's perspective, with interviews from leading creative artists and interaction design practitioners, Rhythm, Play and Interaction Design will help practitioners, researchers and students understand, evaluate and create rhythmic experiences.

Features interviews and personal stories from a range of industry-leading UX professionals to show readers how they broke into the industry, stayed with it, and evolved with it. Accompanied by a companion website that provides readers with featured articles and updated resources covering new and changing information to help them stay on top of this fast-paced industry. Provides worksheets and activities to help readers make decisions for their careers and build their soft business skills and portfolios

This concise volume presents for the first time a coherent and detailed account of why we experience feelings of being present in the physical world and in computer-mediated environments, why we often don't, and why it matters - for design, psychotherapy, tool use and social creativity amongst other practical applications.

"Brainstorming and Beyond" describes the techniques for generating ideas verbally, in writing, or through sketches. The first chapter focuses on brainstorming, the foundation method for ideation, which is a complex social process building off of social psychology principles, motivational constructs, and corporate culture. Brainstorming iscommonly portrayed as an easy way to generate ideas, but in reality, it is a complex social process that is often flawed in ways that are not self-evident. Chapter 2 discusses Brainwriting, which is a variation on brainstorming in which each person writes ideas down on paper and then passes the paper to a new person who reads the first set of ideas and adds new ones. Since there is no group shouting out of ideas, strong facilitation skills are not required, and more often than not, Brainwriting results greatly exceed those of group brainstorming in a shorter time because ideas are generated in a parallel, rather than serial, fashion. Brainwriting is useful when time is limited, groups are hostile, or you are dealing with a culture where shouting out wild or divergent ideas might be difficult. Finally, in Chapter 3, readers learn about Braindrawing, a method of visual brainstorming that helps practitioners generate ideas for icons, other graphics, user interface layouts, or Web page designs. Each of these methods provides readers with ways to generate, present, and evaluate ideas so they can begin building a strong foundation for product success.
Learn the proper techniques for generating ideas with limited time, hostile audiences, and limited facilitation supportExplores efficient processes for analyzing the value of ideasExamines ways to generate visual as well as textual ideas "

Old age is currently the greatest risk factor for developing dementia. Since older people make up a larger portion of the population than ever before, the resulting increase in the incidence of dementia presents a major challenge for society. Dementia is complex and multifaceted and impacts not only the person with the diagnosis but also those caring for them and society as a whole. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design and development are pivotal in enabling people with dementia to live well and be supported in the communities around them. HCI is increasingly addressing the need for inclusivity and accessibility in the design and development of new technologies, interfaces, systems, services, and tools. Using interdisciplinary approaches HCI engages with the complexities and 'messiness' of real-world design spaces to provide novel perspectives and new ways of addressing the challenge of dementia and multi-stakeholder needs. HCI and Design in the Context of Dementia brings together the work of international experts, designers and researchers working across disciplines. It provides methodologies, methods and frameworks, approaches to participatory engagement and case studies showing how technology can impact the lives of people living with dementia and those around them. It includes examples of how to conduct dementia research and design in-context in the field of HCI, ethically and effectively and how these issues transcend the design space of dementia to inform HCI design and technology development more broadly. The book is valuable for and aimed at designers, researchers, scholars and caregivers that work with vulnerable groups like people with dementia, and those directly impacted.

Information resource management is too often seen as a domain dominated by technology, or, at best, one in which human considerations are secondary to and dependent on technological systems. Socio-Technical and Human Cognition Elements of Information Systems brings together chapters from Europe, Australasia, Canada and the Americas, all drawn together by the common theme of the book. It will present information management not as technology influenced by people, but as fundamentally a people-centred domain.

This volume explores how context has been and can be used in computing to model human behaviors, actions and communications as well as to manage data and knowledge. It addresses context management and exploitation of context for sharing experience across domains. The book serves as a user-centric guide for readers wishing to develop context-based applications, as well as an intellectual reference on the concept of context. It provides a broad yet deep treatment of context in computing and related areas that depend heavily on computing. The coverage is broad because of its cross-disciplinary nature but treats topics at a sufficient depth to permit a reader to implement context in his/her computational endeavors. The volume addresses how context can be integrated in software and systems and how it can be used in a computing environment. Furthermore, the use of context to represent the human dimension, individually as well as collectively is explained. Contributions also include descriptions of how context has been represented in formal as well as non-formal, structured approaches. The last section describes several human behavior representation paradigms based on the concept of context as its central representational element. The depth and breadth of this content is certain to provide useful as well as intellectually enriching information to readers of diverse backgrounds who have an interest in or are intrigued by using context to assist in their representation of the real world.

Human computer interaction (HCI) plays a vital role in bridging the 'Digital Divide', bringing people closer to consumer electronics control in the 'lounge'. Keyboards and mouse or remotes do alienate old and new generations alike from control interfaces. Hand Gesture Recognition systems bring hope of connecting people with machines in a natural way. This will lead to consumers being able to use their hands naturally to communicate with any electronic equipment in their 'lounge.' This monograph will include the state of the art hand gesture recognition approaches and how they evolved from their inception. The author would also detail his research in this area for the past 8 years and how the future might turn out to be using HCI. This monograph will serve as a valuable guide for researchers (who would endeavour into) in the world of HCI.

This book provides an insight on the importance that Internet of Things (IoT) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions can have in taking care of people's health. Key features of this book present the recent and emerging developments in various specializations in curing health problems and finding their solutions by incorporating IoT and ICT. This book presents useful IoT and ICT applications and architectures that cater to their improved healthcare requirements. Topics include in-home healthcare services based on the Internet-of-Things; RFID technology for IoT based personal healthcare; Real-time reporting and monitoring; Interfacing devices to IoT; Smart medical services; Embedded gateway configuration (EGC); Health monitoring infrastructure; and more. Features a number of practical solutions and applications of IoT and ICT on healthcare; Includes application domains such as communication technology and electronic materials and devices; Applies to researchers, academics, students, and practitioners around the world.

Providing insights into methodologies for designing adaptive systems based on semantic data, and introducing semantic models that can be used for building interactive systems, this book showcases many of the applications made possible by the use of semantic models. Ontologies may enhance the functional coverage of an interactive system as well as its visualization and interaction capabilities in various ways. Semantic models can also contribute to bridging gaps; for example, between user models, context-aware interfaces, and model-driven UI generation. There is considerable potential for using semantic models as a basis for adaptive interactive systems. A variety of reasoning and machine learning techniques exist that can be employed to achieve adaptive system behavior. The advent and rapid growth of Linked Open Data as a large-scale collection of semantic data has also paved the way for a new breed of intelligent, knowledge-intensive applications. Semantic Models for Adaptive Interactive Systems includes ten complementary chapters written by experts from both industry and academia. Rounded off by a number of case studies in real world application domains, this book will serve as a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners exploring the use of semantic models within HCI.

The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents provides a comprehensive overview of the research fields of Embodied Conversational Agents, Intelligent Virtual Agents, and Social Robotics. Socially Interactive Agents (SIAs), whether virtually or physically embodied, are autonomous agents that are able to perceive an environment including people or other agents, reason, decide how to interact, and express attitudes such as emotions, engagement, or empathy. They are capable of interacting with people and one another in a socially intelligent manner using multimodal communicative behaviors, with the goal to support humans in various domains. Written by international experts in their respective fields, the book summarizes research in the many important research communities pertinent for SIAs, while discussing current challenges and future directions. The handbook provides easy access to modeling and studying SIAs for researchers and students, and aims at further bridging the gap between the research communities involved. In two volumes, the book clearly structures the vast body of research. The first volume starts by introducing what is involved in SIAs research, in particular research methodologies and ethical implications of developing SIAs. It further examines research on appearance and behavior, focusing on multimodality. Finally, social cognition for SIAs is investigated using different theoretical models and phenomena such as theory of mind or pro-sociality. The second volume starts with perspectives on interaction, examined from different angles such as interaction in social space, group interaction, or long-term interaction. It also includes an extensive overview summarizing research and systems of human-agent platforms and of some of the major application areas of SIAs such as education, aging support, autism, and games.

This book presents computational methods for extracting the useful information from audio signals, collecting the state of the art in the field of sound event and scene analysis. The authors cover the entire procedure for developing such methods, ranging from data acquisition and labeling, through the design of taxonomies used in the systems, to signal processing methods for feature extraction and machine learning methods for sound recognition. The book also covers advanced techniques for dealing with environmental variation and multiple overlapping sound sources, and taking advantage of multiple microphones or other modalities. The book gives examples of usage scenarios in large media databases, acoustic monitoring, bioacoustics, and context-aware devices. Graphical illustrations of sound signals and their spectrographic representations are presented, as well as block diagrams and pseudocode of algorithms.

Considering the overall situation of the current pandemic and pertinent recommendations, this book focuses on the use of augmented reality (AR) applications for preventing COVID-19 outbreaks along with techniques, tools, and platforms to achieve social distancing.and sanitization. COVID-19 Public Health Measures: An Augmented Reality Perspective contains theoretical and practical knowledge of AR and remedies on how to cope with the pandemic, including multiple use cases along with a set of recommendations. This book illustrates application building using open-source software with an interactive interface to aid impaired users. The initial part of this book emphasizes the basic knowledge of AR, technology, devices, and rest of the relevant theories. This book is aimed at researchers, students of AR, technical healthcare professionals, and practitioners. Key Features: * Consists of an extensive introduction to the terminologies and components of AR * Provides in-depth knowledge of various tools and techniques used in AR * Introduces various platforms and software development kits (SDKs) such as Unity Engine, Unreal Engine, and Vuforia * Gives a step-by-step guide for the development of an AR app * Describes how AR can be used specifically by impaired users not only in the situation of current pandemic but also in normal situations thus simplifying day-to-day activities

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the field of software processes, covering in particular the following essential topics: software process modelling, software process and lifecycle models, software process management, deployment and governance, and software process improvement (including assessment and measurement). It does not propose any new processes or methods; rather, it introduces students and software engineers to software processes and life cycle models, covering the different types ranging from "classical", plan-driven via hybrid to agile approaches. The book is structured as follows: In chapter 1, the fundamentals of the topic are introduced: the basic concepts, a historical overview, and the terminology used. Next, chapter 2 covers the various approaches to modelling software processes and lifecycle models, before chapter 3 discusses the contents of these models, addressing plan-driven, agile and hybrid approaches. The following three chapters address various aspects of using software processes and lifecycle models within organisations, and consider the management of these processes, their assessment and improvement, and the measurement of both software and software processes. Working with software processes normally involves various tools, which are the focus of chapter 7, before a look at current trends in software processes in chapter 8 rounds out the book. This book is mainly intended for graduate students and practicing professionals. It can be used as a textbook for courses and lectures, for self-study, and as a reference guide. When used as a textbook, it may support courses and lectures on software processes, or be used as complementary literature for more basic courses, such as introductory courses on software engineering or project management. To this end, it includes a wealth of examples and case studies, and each chapter is complemented by exercises that help readers gain a better command of the concepts discussed.

Introducing mobile humanoid robots into human environments requires the systems to physically interact and execute multiple concurrent tasks. The monograph at hand presents a whole-body torque controller for dexterous and safe robotic manipulation. This control approach enables a mobile humanoid robot to simultaneously meet several control objectives with different pre-defined levels of priority, while providing the skills for compliant physical contacts with humans and the environment. After a general introduction into the topic of whole-body control, several essential reactive tasks are developed to extend the repertoire of robotic control objectives. Additionally, the classical Cartesian impedance is extended to the case of mobile robots. All of these tasks are then combined and integrated into an overall, priority-based control law. Besides the experimental validation of the approach, the formal proof of asymptotic stability for this hierarchical controller is presented. By interconnecting the whole-body controller with an artificial intelligence, the immense potential of the integrated approach for complex real-world applications is shown. Several typical household chores, such as autonomously wiping a window or sweeping the floor with a broom, are successfully performed on the mobile humanoid robot Rollin' Justin of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The results suggest the presented controller for a large variety of fields of application such as service robotics, human-robot cooperation in industry, telepresence in medical applications, space robotics scenarios, and the operation of mobile robots in dangerous and hazardous environments.

Virtual Reality is not real life. Instead it is life-like creations using computer-generated scenarios. Human behavior is replicated in virtual scenarios, where every detail is controlled by computers, and in situations that can be repeated under the same conditions. Based on technology and design, the user can experience presence. In the virtual world, users are embodied in avatars that represent them and are the means to interact with the virtual environment. Avatars are graphical models that behave on behalf of the human behind them. The user avatar is a proxy that also backs interaction with others, allowing computer-mediated interactions. Analyses directed to understand people's perceptions, personal and social behavior in computer mediated interactions, comprise a multidisciplinary area of study that involves, among others, computer science, psychology and sociology. In the last two decades a number of studies supported by Virtual Reality have been conducted to understand human behavior, in some cases the implications of the technology, or to reproduce artificial human behavior. This book presents a collection of studies from recognized researchers in the area.

This book highlights cooperative coverage control approaches of multi-agent systems in uncertain environments and their applications in various fields. A novel theoretical formulation of multi-agent coverage is proposed to fulfill the coverage task via divide-and-conquer scheme. By taking workload partition and sweeping operations simultaneously, a distributed sweep coverage algorithm of multi-agent systems is developed to cooperatively complete the workload on the given region, and its input-to-state stability is guaranteed in theory. Moreover, the coverage performance is evaluated by estimating the error between the actual coverage time and the optimal time. Three application scenarios are presented to demonstrate the advantages of cooperative coverage control approaches in missile interception, intelligent transportation systems and environment monitoring, respectively.

Manufacturing, like other industries, is rising to the challenges imposed by aggressive consumer demands and the need for cost-effective processing that delivers quality in the fastest possible time. Fierce competition means that keeping abreast of new developments and applications in technology is essential if companies are to meet demands profitably and keep ahead of competitors. This book investigates the design and management of digital manufacturing and assembly systems for an efficient, flexible, and modular production of customized products using the I40 (industry 4.0)-enabling technologies. This book will also provide case studies covering modeling, simulation, and optimization. eBook includes color figures. Discusses how the advancement of data communication and storage through the Internet of Things (IoT) opens the possibilities of connecting sensors, robots, and devices Sheds light on how the human role in industry is decreasing due to the development of connected manufacturing floors, allowing them to take more control over the manufacturing processes, decisions, and even maintenance Covers the benefits from exploiting digital manufacturing, manufacturing enterprises, and what they expect to achieve Explains the important roles that modeling, simulation, and optimization play Investigates the design and management of digital manufacturing and assembly systems for an efficient, flexible, and modular production of customized products exploiting the I40 (industry 4.0)-enabling technologies

Using mixed and augmented reality in communities is an emerging media practice that is reshaping how we interact with our cities and neighbors. From the politics of city hall to crosswalks and playgrounds, mixed and augmented reality will offer a diverse range of new ways to interact with our communities. In 2016, apps for augmented reality politics began to appear in app stores. Similarly, the blockbuster success of Pokemon Go illustrated how even forgotten street corners can become a magical space for play. In 2019, a court case in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, extended first amendment rights to augmented reality. For all the good that these emerging media provide, there will and have been consequences. Augmented and Mixed Reality for Communities will help students and practitioners navigate the ethical design and development of these kinds of experiences to transform their cities. As one of the first books of its kind, each chapter in the book prepares readers to contribute to the Augmented City. By providing insight into how these emerging media work, the book seeks to democratize the augmented and mixed reality space. Authors within this volume represent some of the leading scholars and practitioners working in the augmented and mixed reality space for civic media, cultural heritage, civic games, ethical design, and social justice. Readers will find practical insights for the design and development to create their own compelling experiences. Teachers will find that the text provides in-depth, critical analyses for thought-provoking classroom discussions.

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

This book demystifies what artificial intelligence is, examines its strength and limitations in comparison to what humans are capable of, and investigates the nature of human adaptive expertise across the concept of metis. It also examines a particular family of mindsets that we as humans have adopted over the ages, namely epistemologies of representational knowledge. These representational perspectives have followed us into numerous fields, including how we perceive and comprehend human cognition - leading to 'with a hammer everything looks like a nail' syndrome. As such, this book presents the alternative phenomenological viewpoint of embodied direct reality within the cognitive sciences in the form of radical embodied cognition and, more importantly, how it allows us to better highlight and comprehend human metis and its adaptive expertise. We then examine why we collectively continue to enact and perpetuate predominant mindsets of representations across the phenomena of mindlessness. To counter this, we re-visit the practice of individual and collective mindfulness, providing a potential 'beachhead' in our re-appropriation of technology (artificial intelligence) towards achieving the best of both worlds - that is, allowing human creativity and ingenuity to be expressed with artificial intelligence as a tool to help us do just that across meaningful human control. Finally, we conclude by examining current top-of-the-horizon activities and debates regarding quantum physics in relation to the human mind and artificial intelligence and how, once again, representational mindsets need not be the only tool in town.

The new frontiers of robotics research foresee future scenarios where artificial agents will leave the laboratory to progressively take part in the activities of our daily life. This will require robots to have very sophisticated perceptual and action skills in many intelligence-demanding applications, with particular reference to the ability to seamlessly interact with humans. It will be crucial for the next generation of robots to understand their human partners and at the same time to be intuitively understood by them. In this context, a deep understanding of human motion is essential for robotics applications, where the ability to detect, represent and recognize human dynamics and the capability for generating appropriate movements in response sets the scene for higher-level tasks. This book provides a comprehensive overview of this challenging research field, closing the loop between perception and action, and between human-studies and robotics. The book is organized in three main parts. The first part focuses on human motion perception, with contributions analyzing the neural substrates of human action understanding, how perception is influenced by motor control, and how it develops over time and is exploited in social contexts. The second part considers motion perception from the computational perspective, providing perspectives on cutting-edge solutions available from the Computer Vision and Machine Learning research fields, addressing higher-level perceptual tasks. Finally, the third part takes into account the implications for robotics, with chapters on how motor control is achieved in the latest generation of artificial agents and how such technologies have been exploited to favor human-robot interaction. This book considers the complete human-robot cycle, from an examination of how humans perceive motion and act in the world, to models for motion perception and control in artificial agents. In this respect, the book will provide insights into the perception and action loop in humans and machines, joining together aspects that are often addressed in independent investigations. As a consequence, this book positions itself in a field at the intersection of such different disciplines as Robotics, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning. By bridging these different research domains, the book offers a common reference point for researchers interested in human motion for different applications and from different standpoints, spanning Neuroscience, Human Motor Control, Robotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Computer Vision and Machine Learning. Chapter 'The Importance of the Affective Component of Movement in Action Understanding' of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

Intelligent Computing for Interactive System Design provides a comprehensive resource on what has become the dominant paradigm in designing novel interaction methods, involving gestures, speech, text, touch and brain-controlled interaction, embedded in innovative and emerging human-computer interfaces. These interfaces support ubiquitous interaction with applications and services running on smartphones, wearables, in-vehicle systems, virtual and augmented reality, robotic systems, the Internet of Things (IoT), and many other domains that are now highly competitive, both in commercial and in research contexts. This book presents the crucial theoretical foundations needed by any student, researcher, or practitioner working on novel interface design, with chapters on statistical methods, digital signal processing (DSP), and machine learning (ML). These foundations are followed by chapters that discuss case studies on smart cities, brain-computer interfaces, probabilistic mobile text entry, secure gestures, personal context from mobile phones, adaptive touch interfaces, and automotive user interfaces. The case studies chapters also highlight an in-depth look at the practical application of DSP and ML methods used for processing of touch, gesture, biometric, or embedded sensor inputs. A common theme throughout the case studies is ubiquitous support for humans in their daily professional or personal activities. In addition, the book provides walk-through examples of different DSP and ML techniques and their use in interactive systems. Common terms are defined, and information on practical resources is provided (e.g., software tools, data resources) for hands-on project work to develop and evaluate multimodal and multi-sensor systems. In a series of in-chapter commentary boxes, an expert on the legal and ethical issues explores the emergent deep concerns of the professional community, on how DSP and ML should be adopted and used in socially appropriate ways, to most effectively advance human performance during ubiquitous interaction with omnipresent computers. This carefully edited collection is written by international experts and pioneers in the fields of DSP and ML. It provides a textbook for students and a reference and technology roadmap for developers and professionals working on interaction design on emerging platforms.

Due to the increased global political importance of the nonprofit sector, its technological support and organizational characteristics have become important fields of research. In order to conduct effective work, nonprofits need to communicate and coordinate effectively. However, such settings are generally characterized by a lack of resources, an absence of formal hierarchical structures and differences in languages and culture among the activists. Modern technologies could help nonprofit networks in improving their working. In order to design appropriate technological support for such settings, it is important to understand their work practices, which widely differ from traditional business organizations. This book aims to strengthen the body of knowledge by providing user studies and concepts related to user centered technology design process for nonprofit settings. The examination of ethnographic studies and user centered evaluation of IT artifacts in practice will further the understanding of design requirements of these systems. This book includes chapters from leading scholars and practitioners on the technology design process examining human centered factors. The chapters will focus on developed and developing countries as they both have unique issues in technology design. The book will be useful or of interest to academics from a range of fields including information systems, human computer interaction, computer supported cooperative work and organizational science as well as for government officials and governmental organizations.