Trending Breakthroughs in Human-Computer Interaction
J.UCS Special Issue
Sandra Baldassarri
(Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
sandra@unizar.es)
José A. Macías
(Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
j.macias@uam.es)
Jaime Urquiza-Fuentes
(Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain
jaime.urquiza@urjc.es)
1 Introduction and Motivation
There has been an increasing role of computers and machines in society
over the last years. This has motivated Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI) to become an important field for both industry and academy. In
fact, there is currently an especial interest in the design,
development and implementation of applications highlighting
user-friendly interfaces.
This special issue aims at a full discussion on new trends in
Human-Computer Interaction, bringing together trending papers and
breakthroughs in this field.
In particular, we invited authors of best papers presented at the XIV
International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Interacción
2013) to submit thoroughly revised versions of their contributions to
this special issue. Interacción Conference provides an annual forum
for disseminating the results of innovative research in Human-Computer
Interaction concerning usability, accessibility, evaluation of
interactive systems, hypermedia and web, affective computing, computer
supported collaborative work, interaction for people with
disabilities, context-aware systems, end-user development and other
related areas. In addition, an open call for submissions was also
launched, receiving other contributions from around the world.
2 Contributions
Specifically, for this special issue 12 submissions were
received. Each paper has followed a strict peer-review process: it was
reviewed by at least two international experts, and in several cases a
second reviewing round for major revisions was needed. Finally, after
that process, 5 quality articles were selected for this special issue
of the Journal of Universal Computer Science, where 3 out of such 5
articles are extended versions of papers accepted and presented at
Interacción 2013.
The articles presented in this special issue deal with a variety of
important topics within the HCI scope. Thus, novel user requirements
extraction approaches are presented focusing on interactive web
services development by Chiraz, et al. (Section 2.1) and accessibility
by Calvo, et al. (Section 2.2). An advanced menu system like
Keyboard-Card menu is studied by Berman and Hourcade (Section
2.3). Finally, there are two articles applying innovative interactive
technologies, such as the use of affective computing in poetry by
Arellano, et al. (Section 2.4) and the use of different strategies of
locomotion for making 3D Virtual Environments accessible to a wide
range of users by Moya, et al. (Section 2.5). Next we provide a brief
description of each article.
2.1 A User-Aware Approach to Provide Adaptive Web Services
In this paper, authors report on the adaptation of web services to
user profiles in order to have a more accurate control of their work
environment and other variables useful for interaction purposes. In
this sense, the work proposes context-aware web services in order to
support profile specifications and ensure the self-adaptation to
run-time context changes.
2.2 User Centered Requirement Engineering for Accessible Chats in
m-Learning
This article is an attempt to detect accessibility problems in chat
applications while using mobile learning. Authors report on the
requirements needed to improve interaction with people experiencing
problems with the flow and the rhythm of the conversations in
chats. This way, a methodological approach has been provided combining
human-computer interaction and software engineering paradigms.
2.3 Keyboard-Card Menus: A New Presentation of Non-standard Shortcuts
In this paper, authors present a novel proposal of menu interaction,
namely keyboard-card menus, intended for presenting a large number of
shortcuts and encouraging easy-to-learn. This proposal is evaluated
through a study comparing keyboard-card and classical drop-down menus,
revealing advantages in the use of the novel approach here presented.
2.4 Let me listen to Poetry, Let me See Emotions
This work proposes the engineering of an interactive virtual character
that recites poetry while manifesting the emotional content of the
poem using facial expressions and affective voice. Authors present
this paper on the basis of several disciplines such as real-time
animation, semantic analysis and natural voice interaction to carry
through a novel and original environment to encourage the user
experience.
2.5 First-person Locomotion in 3D Virtual Environments: a Usability Analysis
Through this work, authors present a usability analysis based on
first-person locomotion in 3D virtual environments. This paper
describes the problems experienced by elder persons or even people
unfamiliar with 3D games in order to move avatars through these
environments. Authors propose the testing of different methods to
leverage such problems, including definitive results and conclusions.
3 Committee
We would like to express our gratitude to the committee members
involved in this special issue for their valuable work on reviewing
all contributions and giving detailed feedback:
Abascal, Julio, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain
Adams, Anne, Open University, United Kingdom
Alghazzawi, Daniyal M., King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Arellano, Diana, Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
Bednarik, Roman, University of Eastern Finland, Finland
Borges, Marcos, Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Castellano, Ginevra, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Collazos, Cesar Alberto, Universidad de Cauca, Colombia
Fardoun, Habib M., King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Fernández, Eduardo, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
González, Mª Paula, CONICET, Argentina
Granollers, Toni,Universidad de Lleida, Spain
Heidmann, Olivier, University of Thessaly, Greece
Hoppe, Ulrich, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Leporini, Bárbara, Italian National Research Council (CNR), Italy
Mendes, Antonio José, Universidad de Coimbra, Portugal
Palanque, Philippe, Université Paul Sabatier, France
Pastor, Oscar, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
Paternò, Fabio, Italian National Research Council (CNR), Italy
Puerta, Angelm RedWhale Software, USA
Read, Janet, University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom
Rossi, Gustavo, Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Argentina
Sturm, Christian, Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Vanderdonckt, Jean, University of Lovaina, Belgium
Van der Veer, Gerrit University of Vrije, The Netherlands
Winckler, Marco, Université Paul Sabatier, France
Xu, Diana, University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom
Sandra Baldassarri
José A. Macías
Jaime Urquiza-Fuentes
Guest Editors
Spain, June 2014
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