Ing. Martin Klíma, Ph.D.

In this paper we present a comparative study of free-hand pointing, an absolute remote pointing device. Unimanual and bimanual interaction were tested as well as the static reference system (spatial coordinates are fixed in the space in front of the TV) and novel body-aligned reference system (coordinates are bound to the current position of the user). We conducted a point-and-click experiment with 12 participants. We have identified the preferred interaction areas for left- and right-handed users in terms of hand preference and preferred spatial areas of the interaction. In bimanual interaction, the users relied more on dominant hand, switching hands only when necessary. Even though the remote pointing device was faster than the free-hand pointing, it was less accepted probably due to its low precision.

For elderly or disabled people it is challenging to control a variety of home devices that have different inconsistent user interfaces. Therefore it is necessary to provide a single controller with personalized user interfaces that makes the control of household devices easy. In this paper we present our User Interface Platform (UIP) and its application in an ISO-standardized smart home middleware framework Universal Remote Console (URC). URC utilizes a concept of pluggable user interfaces making it possible to use various user interface technologies to control any device connected. Integration of URC and our UIP platform enabled delivery of personalized user interfaces to various controller platforms including smart TV, smart phone, PC and tablet PC.

The vision-impaired people manage to cover most of their everyday needs with the help of technological equipment. Some needs, however, still require special attention: For example, commonly used pregnancy tests provide results that may be interpreted only visually. The users of these tests who are vision-impaired are dependent on a help of a sighted person which is a drastic invasion of users' privacy. This paper proposes a solution to this problem: A design of a prototype of a system allowing the vision-impaired users to interpret the results of a pregnancy test using a PC with scanner is presented and evaluated.

The process of data visualisation can be very complex and an urgent need for interactive control of this process is imminent. Solution to this problem is in the field of user interfaces by means of which the user can efficiently control all aspects of the visualisation. One of the fields where a lot of challenges for development of new user interfaces exist is data visualisation in heterogeneous environment. In such case data are visualised on various devices that have different capabilities. This fact influences not only the results of the visualisation process but also design and implementation of user interface for each particular device. In situation when an application is capable to run on various devices it is rather problematic to manually create individual user interfaces, one for each device. In this paper a concept and results of automatic generation of user interfaces in a heterogeneous environment is described.

Multiple attempts [1-5] to use automatic user interface generation were performed, but none of them is widely adopted. The main issues of design and implementation are the overall complexity of input (input models) to the user interface generators, platform dependency, and corresponding poor scalability. From users' perspective, automatically generated user interfaces often look too artificial, form-like and over-complicated. Current methods of the automatic design do not allow the developers to explicitly specify the importance of individual elements of the input model and the desired "look and feel" of the resulting user interface. The former problem does not allow the user interface generators to construct the user interface where the elements are positioned based on their actual importance or even omitted (e.g due to screen size constraints). The latter problem makes all user interfaces look alike and thus diminishing the potential to articulate a user experience.

This paper introduces a Vector keyboard for mobile devices with a touchscreen. Typing is produced by simple strokes sourcing from one of four blocks of letters. A user study was made comparing this keyboard with standard QWERTY, ABC and a Mobile keyboards. The study resulted in a comparable performance in terms of speed and typing with all the named layouts but QWERTY. The user preference and subjective evaluation is in contrast to the performance measured preferring the Vector keyboard over ABC and Mobile

The Human Computer Interaction(HCI) discipline is dealing with systematic design and evaluation of user interfaces of interactive systems. This text describes several methods and techniques introduced in the frame of HCI, which are intended to improve the usability and user comfort of designed interactive systems. The UCD (User-Centered Design) methodology is described. The way the user research is performed and how yo create the persona models of the users is described in the following text.

Pervasive computing [1] brings the technology closer to the users by enabling the users to use daily-life devices (mobile phones, TVs, touch screen walls, etc.) for controlling their environment and accessing information virtually anywhere. Interacting with such devices does not remind users of classical computers and enables them to more naturally interact with the controlled system, if user interface is designed properly. These devices usually operate in networked environments with every controlling and controlled device connected to a central hub. Bringing easy-to-use applications to such environments faces the challenge of highly heterogeneous, dynamically changing environment and necessity to deploy applications to controlling devices with very different features (display size, input methods, operating systems, etc.).

This paper describes a User Centered Design driven development of a system for modern digital home based on the ISO/IEC 24752 standard: Universal Remote Console - URC. The primary target group - elderly users - has problems accepting certainm devices and their respective user Interfaces. We show that certain user interfaces are acceptable despite the fact thet they convey a complex set of functionalities in a modern digital home.

In this poster we present a technology for developing client-server applications in heterogeneous environments such as applications with multiple client devices running on different platforms. We developed a language for describing user interfaces and for communication between client and server. The language is focused on clear separation of application logic, data and presentation. The application logic is common for all clients and is always deployed on the server side that does not require reimplementation of application for each particular client technology.

Paper introduces a vector keyboard for touch screen devices. Characters are typed by drawing a vector starting from a dedicated area. The typing area is divided into three clusters, each containing 9 characters. Measurement of typing speed and of number of typos reveals that the keyboard is comparable to ABCDEF virtual keyboard.

i2home focuses on intelligent household based on industrial standards. Elderly people can take advantage of home automation to prolong their independent live and enhance their safety and security.

In this paper we describe the design, development and evaluation of user interfaces for a modern digital home based on the ISO/IEC 24752 standard: Universal Remote Console-URC. Two target groups were addressed: seniors aged 65 years and above and people suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Our goal is to design user interfaces (UI) for our target groups that make use of all available modalities, such as, graphics, voice, and video. We provide a set of recommendations and design patterns for developing UIs for seniors and Alzheimer's disease patients. We present the results of tests of user interfaces designed for smart home environment.

This paper provides a short summary and bibliography of the accessibility research at the Czech Technical University in Prague. It also presents an overview of our collaboration with our industrial partners that is related to the assistive technologies as well as our training and networking activities.

This paper describes an approach to data adaptation in a mobile collaborative environment. Data reduction and modification technique is used called Adaptation to the context of use. In this paper we are introducing algorithms how to proceed different adaptations for individual users so that they still can communicate and understand each other when browsing the plans. The technique is based on SVG graphics, domain ontology, semantic description associated with the SVG and user's context of use.

In this paper we introduce a system for real time collaboration and sharing of graphical data in the mobile environment. The main innovative feature of the system is involvement of semantic information into the process of data sharing and mainly into the customization of the data for individual users. Each user involved in the collaboration gets individually personalized data. the system is, thanks to the semantic information, able to ensure a fluent collaboration even if the data are personalized differently for each user.

In this paper we introduce an application level protocol for sharing of XML based data. This protocol is especially designed for mobile environment. It is able to deal with unreliability of the mobile wireless networks where the client´s bandwith is limited and the connection may frequently fail. We describe the synchronization process of the data from the client side as well as from the server side. The protocol can deal with data synchronization conflicts and can prevent them in most cases by using data locking mechnism. Data buffering mechanism from client and server side is supporting the reestablishing of data consistency after connection failure. The protocol has been verified by means of scenario from a facility management domain.

The project MUMMY funded by the European Commission develops means to improve the efficiency of mobile business processes through mobile, personalized knowldge management. MUMMY approaches the challenges of mobile work processes. In this paper the achivements of MUMMY are introduced and individual components are briefly described.

The paper deals with problem of the work with shared data in mobile environment

The paper deals with the design of architecture of mobile collaborative systems.

The paper deals with problem of adaptation of graphical data in mobile environment. The special topic investigated is collaborative work in this environment when sharing common graphical data.

We have designed and implemented a graphical tool for visualization and manipulation with semantic metadata for the use of data adaptation in the mobile environment. The tool is capable of visualizing of both the 3D (2D) data and the semantic graphs. The semantics and geometrical information are interconnected so the manipulation with one is immediately propagated to the other. The interactivity and appropriate visualization greatly help the user to create or modify complex semantic descriptions.

Mobile computing is a technology that ensures mobility of the user with instant access to all information that are necessary for efficient usage of applications that have business, technological or another character.

The problems of human-computer communication (HCC) that arise with introduction of user groups with special requirements are discussed. We analyze new approaches that increase the quality of HCC in the environment of disabled users or user utilizing mobile devices. In both cases the problem of adaptation of the interactive system (which communicates with the user) to dynamically and very strongly changing context of use (end-device features, environment, user tasks, user capabilities, etc.) are addressed. We have analyzed existing solutions. The insufficiency of these solutions in the field of adaptation of system data (the data manipulated by the user using the user interface of an interactive system) was identified.

Problems of data retrieval and collaborative work in mobile environment are introduced. System architecture of a system solving these problems is introduced and described. A short analysis of the system requirements and possible architecture is given and a result solution (with respect to the use case) is introduced. Finally technique of optimizing the network traffic using a message queue reduction is described.

The problem of the access of blind people to the graphical information (in a form of picture) is discussed. It is necessary to reduce amount of complex information of the picture to keep understandability of the picture description for blind user. This is solved by special seman- tic and structural dialog filters, which filter required information. The research has been conducted in the framework of several projects. The result of this research is an implementation of tools for creating and bro- wsing the picture description. Because of the similarity between picture description and hypertext document description the filtering methods developed could be also used on any hypertext document, which follows our document structure [3] definition made in XML [6]. The method de- veloped allows the user to transform two-dimensional information into textual one. In such a way complex manipulations can be performed in textual form.