Ing. Ivo Malý, Ph.D.

The presentation of clothing collection objects in museums brings specific constraints and requirements. Textile objects are particularly sensitive to mechanical handling and prolonged exposure to light. At the same time, it is interesting to see these objects in motion as they were worn. In this paper, we propose a new method of presenting digital 3D models of clothing collection objects that allows us to display these objects in motion. The presentation is handled by two real-time applications. Virtual Wardrobe, designed especially for enthusiasts, aims at simulating the movement of the fabric as closely as possible, with the possibility of zooming in on details and showing clothing in a historicizing environment. Virtual Mirror, aimed towards the general public, allows visitors to virtually put on selected collection objects. The Virtual Mirror can display up to three visitors simultaneously and performs semiautomatic calibration to their character types. The main innovation of the proposed presentation of historical clothing objects is presentation of their detailed 3D reconstruction in motion in real time on dimensionally appropriate models of figures. This makes the solution different from the optimized models used in computer games and the non-real-time rendering used in the film industry. Both applications were subjected to a long-term usage study and a questionnaire study to determine visitor acceptance, which was positive. We summarize the experience of deploying both applications in practice at the museum exhibition.

In this paper, we describe the integration of Virtual Reality (VR) into a museum education programme. The aim of the programme is to present the cultural heritage of Langweil's model of Prague in the context of author's life in the 19th century. For the programme, we developed a VR application in which students experience the creation of Langweil's model of Prague, more specifically, they virtually draw and cut out a facade of a house and insert it into the rest of the model. As part of the educational programme, the students also experience a similar activity with a paper model, which leads them to compare the creation in VR and in reality with real tools. The context of the author's life is covered by two additional programme activities using a budget simulation and a discussion using historical photographs. In a pilot study we evaluated the programme with 31 students and we describe the observed results from both the students' and the organisation's perspectives.

Pill reminding is very helpful, especially for older people, who usually have to take multiple pills due to their health issues. In this work, we present requirements gathered from a blind elderly user in comparison with most popular pill reminder mobile applications. We also describe the first round of User-centered design (UCD) lifecycle of new pill reminder mobile application which attempts to solve shortcomings of already existing pill reminder applications.

Driver inattention is one of the factors in many car crash or near-crash incidents. This inattention can be caused by distractors that force the driver to look away from the forward roadway. In this paper, we focused on external distractors, namely static billboards. We proposed two methods that suppress the visibility of the billboard - Wiped method, which covers the billboard with black content and Transparent method, which makes the billboard 90% transparent. In the following study with 10 participants, we observed that the wiped method was more successful in suppressing the driver's attention to the billboard than transparent method. Participants spent in average 0.42 seconds looking at one wiped billboard compared to 0.89 seconds spent looking at one transparent billboard. The Wiped method was also favored by participants in post-test subjective rating.

This work investigates the performance of older adults in tasks related to recognition of tactile symbols. We conducted experiments to evaluate different tactile symbols with varying elevation, shape form (outline, fill), and symbol preference in general. Experiments were performed with the general population of visually impaired (N = 6, age mean = 46.3) and with visually impaired older adults (N = 9, age mean = 76.8). We used both qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the experiments. The results indicate that even older adults are capable of distinguishing between six different tactile symbols. Participates frequently failed to connect meanings of abstract symbols with functions of a hypothetical orientation system terminal.

Older adults gradually lose their physical and psychical abilities, and they have to get accustomed to this fact. This situation causes certain discomfort for these people and question arises how to make their life easier to minimize the discomfort. One of the possible solutions is to provide them with training by means of which they can acquire new skills that may ideally compensate their inabilities to a satisfactory extent. In this paper, we will discuss possibilities how to employ new information technologies allowing to simulate the virtual interaction of the person in various environments. The use of these technologies also allows personalization, i.e., taking into account the abilities of individual users that suffer from a particular handicap. Moreover, these technologies make possible to train people for new situations in new environments in advance, before they occur there physically, for instance, to train them for operating new devices in the household, etc. The goal of this paper is to attract the attention of people who work in institutions where care for older adults is provided to new methods that in principle can increase the comfort of older adults together with allowing caregivers to increase quality and efficiency of their work. The technology cannot replace human caregivers, but it should provide them with new possibilities in the process when older adults are treated.

React Native is an open source library for creating native mobile apps using Javascript and React. It allows the developer to create user interfaces using React components which are then mapped onto their native counterparts. The topic of this talk is development of an app for ios and Android with this library. We will cover different topics such as the developer experience, communication with native and libraries for state management, as well as achieving platform-specific look and feel. We will conclude with some of the advantages and disadvantages of using React Native.

Older adults challenged with vision impairments require special care, often served in residential care institutions. This paper presents outcomes of a user study to reveal everyday needs and problems of clients of such institution. The study was organized as semistructured interviews with residential home clients (N = 6) and staff (N = 6). Our findings indicate that most needs can be already addressed by specific care given in residential institutions. However, we identified areas where ICT could be beneficial for better orientation and well-being of clients. We draw results to motivate and frame design directions.

The role of human in the Industrie 4.0 vision is still considered as irreplaceable. Therefore, user interfaces of cyber-physical systems involved in the production automation need to be well designed and taking into consideration the industrial application requirements. With the advances in augmented and virtual reality data visualization and novel interaction techniques like mid-air gestures, these approaches seem to be suitable for integration into the industry environment. This paper describes the implementation of an augmented reality application for smart glasses with mid-air gestures and smart phone with touch interaction to compare and evaluate the usage of such interfaces in a production cell comprising an industrial robot.

Indoor environments like hospitals are typically very complex and hard to navigate even for healthy individuals. Factors like bad health status, higher stress level, and possible impairments can make the orientation in hospitals even more challenging. We describe the evolution of context-sensitive navigation system that provides adaptive indoor navigation without forcing users to use sophisticated smartphones or other specialized personal navigation devices. Instead, various networked navigation terminal installed at appropriate spots in the indoor environment are used to guide users to their destination. User study (N=10) and on-site study in a big hospital have been conducted. Prototypes including hospital visit preparation website, smart kiosk and waiting room kiosk, were developed and evaluated. These prototypes have been evaluated with target user audience, LoFi prototype (N=6) and HiFi prototype (N=12). The results suggest usability and utility of our navigation systems for the target user audience.

As current software keeps growing in size and complexity, the means to visualize its structure become insufficient. Noticeably, standard UML diagrams and their implementations in the industrial tools can depict only diagrams of certain level of complexity. When the complexity rises above this level, the diagrams become no longer visually understandable and start to hinder analytical reasoning. This is mostly a problem of diagrams created during automated reverse-engineering processes. In this study we summarize and validate a new approach for software structure visualization which aims at supporting visual presentation of large software systems. It combines a notation derived from the UML component diagram with tool-supported interaction, utilizing features like hiding of unnecessary information that can be revealed on demand to reduce complexity of the diagrams. To validate the approach, we implemented an experimental tool that provides both the notation and interactive features. The main contribution of this study is an evaluation of the approach through a user study. The results of the user evaluation suggest that the proposed notation in combination with the interactive features allows users to gain insight into a visualized application faster in comparison to standard UML as supported by industrial tools.

We raise a question whether it is possible to build a large-scale navigation system for blind pedestrians where a blind person navigates another blind person remotely by mobile phone. We have conducted an experiment, in which we observed blind people navigating each other in a city center in 19 sessions. We focused on problems in the navigator’s attempts to direct the traveler to the destination. We observed 96 problems in total, classified them on the basis of the type of navigator or traveler activity and according to the location in which the problem occurred. Most of the problems occurred during the activities performed by the navigator. We extracted a set of guidelines based on analysis of navigation problems and successful navigation strategies. We have partially mapped the problem of tele-assistance navigation to POMDP based dialogue system.

Mobile navigation applications help improve the quality of life and self-confidence of visually impaired people. In order to understand the issues of communication between visually impaired user and mobile navigation application, qualitative analysis related to the structure of navigation process should be used. Therefore we propose a design of new usability evaluation tool that is based on the functional model of a general navigation system for blind. We implemented the tool and evaluated it with data from our recent experiment on mobile navigation aid. Results showed that the tool allows analysis of navigation problems and investigation of specific user behavior, specifically issues related to timing of the navigation dialog in relation to the position of visually impaired user and verification of correct execution of navigation instructions.

Navigation of blind people is different from the navigation of sighted people and there is also difference when the blind person is recovering from getting lost. In this paper we focus on qualitative analysis of dialogs between lost blind person and navigator, which is done through the mobile phone. The research was done in two outdoor and one indoor location. The analysis revealed several areas where the dialog model must focus on detailed information, like evaluation of instructions provided by blind person and his/her ability to reliably locate navigation points.

In this paper we introduce a prototype system for an interactive advertisement panel. Our panel prototype engages attention of passing potential customers for 50x longer time period than its printed alternative. The panel attracts his/her attention and engages him/her into a short interactive game. It uses computer vision methods to track potential customers face and to estimate potential customer’s age and gender, which can be used for better targeting and evaluation of an advertisement campaign. A proof of concept implementation of panel prototype has been qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated.

User behavior is significantly influenced by the surrounding environment. Especially complex and dynamically changing environments (like mobile environment) are represented by a wide variety of extraneous variables, which influence the user behavior in an unpredictable and mostly uncontrolled way. For researchers, it is challenging to measure and analyze the user behavior in such environments. We introduce a complex tool-the IVE tool-which provides a unique way of context visualization and synchronization of measured data of various kinds. Thanks to this tool it is possible to efficiently evaluate data acquired during complex usability tests in a mobile environment. The functionality of this tool is demonstrated on the use case "Navigation of visually impaired users in the building with support of a navigation system called NaviTerier." During the experiment, we focused on collection and analysis of data that may show user stress and which may influence his/her ability to n

Patient data monitoring is in general very complicated tasks, which should take into account needs of multiple types of patient. However, complex verification of such processes is not feasible to evaluate with real users. Goal of VERITAS project is to provide a framework for simulation of virtual users in virtual environment in order to investigate potential behavior of various types of users. Virtual users were created based on measurements of parameters of real persons. The simulation shows the patient data both as qualitative and quantitative data. Based on the results, the monitoring processes may be optimized.

The goal of our project was to design a user interface of a digital television (DTV) for elderly people and develop a prototype capable of running on currently available set-top boxes. As the providers of DTV offer a great range of different channels, we decided to leave out the common channel-oriented approach and focus on searching and management of television shows.

Improving accessibility of games was recently identified as one of approaches how to increase the number of potential players. In this paper we propose and discuss several tools for analysing the interaction of a player and a computer game in order to increase accessibility of the game. We focus on interaction devices that use key presses, a mouse cursor movement and mouse clicks for the interaction with the game. Our tools monitor the user interactions during game play and then visualize the interaction of the user through the devices with the game.

Evaluation of application accessibility is a challenging task that requires an intensive testing with potential application users. An alternative to user tests is the model based testing using simulations. The simulations provide important feedback about application accessibility particularly when it is hard to involve the target users in the tests which is often the case for users with disabilities. In this paper we propose a methodology of providing the quickly and easily necessary data for the simulations. In particular we show how to annotate task models using application walkthroughs logs that is data obtained by recording the application usage. We create annotated task models, which together with the user models are suitable for simulation of application usage by virtual users with various disabilities. We present tools for recording and processing of the application walkthrough logs and tools for the interactive task model annotation. Finally, we provide actual examples of task model annotation on three scenarios involving the Second Life metaverse.

In this paper we introduce a framework for testing applications in ambient intelligence environments. The concept is derived from the methodologies of desktop application usability testing combined with evaluation of user behaviour in an ambient inmtelligence environment. It is based on our experience with user behaviour recording, which is visualized and investigated mainly in virtual environment. The visualization serves as a tool for analyzing complex situations and detection of usability issues in ambient intelligence applications.

Abstract Mobile navigation application are the ones that must be tested in real environment in order to show their usability problems. Preparation of the study in real environment is complex issue and so is the analysis of the collected data from such study. Therefore we performed usability study of mobile navigation application for visually impaired users and implemented a set of visualization plug-ins for IVE tools. IVE tool and visualization plug-ins were used for pre-processing and for visual analysis of collected data from the usability study of mobile indoor navigation application. We found that with IVE we were able to find approximately the same amount of usability issues as without this tool, but the IVE tool increased the speed of pre-processing and annotation creation i.e. the time necessary for the analysis has been reduced.

Usability testing is technique for analysis of the usability problems of applications, but it requires significant effort to prepare the test and especially to analyze data colleted during the test. New techniques such as usage of task models were introduced to imrove and speed up the test analysis. Unforttunately only few applications provide the task model. Therefore we propose a method and tools for partial reconstruction of the task list and the task model called skeleton. This reconstruction is done from the usability expert´s aplication walkthroughs. The task model skeleton is generated automatically, but it should provide similar information during the usability data analysis as manually created full-scaled task model. In order to evaluate usage of the task model skeleton we conducted a usability study with the web e-mail client Roundcube.

The paper deals with description of a framework developed in project Vital Mind. The project deals with the use of interactive digital TV for cognitive training of elderly people.

In this paper we summarize our research in the field of user interface and user interaction design dedicated for senior users in the interactive digital TV (iDTV) environment. The iDTV environment as well as the target user group has been challenging for user-interface design. To achieve the best result we have used User-Centered Design (UCD) technique, which is specific by involving the user into the whole designing process. We present features of iDTV environment and characteristics of target user group. Based on that we introduce several design recommendations, which are evaluated in two projects.

In this paper we present a new visualization method for analysis of the usability test data provided in a log file form. In contrast to the traditional approach, our method uses also the data from the application task and dialog models to give the usability expert detailed log file visualizations with alternative paths. We show the use of the new approach on the example of voice applications, where it appears to be especially suitable. In addition, we describe architecture of a work-in-progress analytical tool that supports such dialog and task based visualizations. As the task models foster deeper understanding of usability data, we believe this approach makes it much easier for developers and for usability experts to communicate over the usability issues.

Ambient intelligence is a rapidly developing field producing a new generation of applications and services demanding new, more complex strategies for usability testing and evaluation. In this paper, we identify caveats of traditional methods of application usability testing when applied to an ambient intelligent environment and we introduce a method for unified analysis of user behavior using a virtual environment visualization. For the usability testing in ambient environments, we propose to transform data (both data recorded in real settings and data artificially created by experts) into a virtual environment to cope with the following issues: a) overwhelming amount of data, b) proprietary data formats, and c) ethical codices issues. We describe a tool for creation of expert evaluation data and for transformation of data from video recordings and illustrate its use on two cases.

In the last couple of years drivers can use much more equipment in their car than ever before. They have mobile phones, car navigations, radio sets and other tools that should help drivers to do their work. Unfortunately, many studies have shown that driving is quite a demanding activity and that drivers should not be distracted for safety reasons. To ensure safe driving, experiments are conducted to measure cognitive load when particular in-car equipment is used. The goal of the experiments is to avoid dangerous setups and to improve user interfaces so that the cognitive load of the driver is maintained at a reasonable level.

Evaluation of user interface design is usually based on usability testing methods. In this paper we analyzed and described the user behavior in the form of the user model. The user model is built on a data set which was acquired through observation of user behavior. The criterion we use for the evaluation of the usability of interface design is the user cognitive load. We present different tools for visualization, simulation and easier analysis of the user model. Because each of the methods and tools presented use only part of the user model, in the end we present methods on how to use the complete user model to correctly describe user behavior. In order to understand such a complex model we need to have a proper visualization tool. The concept of such a visualization tool is presented at the end of this paper.

In this paper we describe CityRider, a car simulator, which we developed to research the usability of in-car equipment. The simulator consists of a landscape generator, the simulator engine itself and a hardware setup. The landscape generator is able to create a high variety of cities.

In this paper we discuss techniques on how task models can enhance visualization of the usability test log. Evaluation of the usability tests is a traditional method in user centered design. It is a part of the methodology for design of usable products. We developed a tool for visualization of usability logs that uses the hierarchical structure of the task models to group and visualize observers' annotations.