Journal on Interactive Systems

Using Model Cards for ethical reflection on machine learning models: an interview-based study

2023-12-01T15:02:45+00:00

How do tools designed for documenting machine learning models contribute to developers’ ethical reflection? We set out to answer this question regarding Model Cards, a tool proposed for such purpose. We conducted a thematic analysis of eight semi-structured interviews based on speculative design sessions. Each participant assumed the role of developer of an artificial intelligence model in one of two scenarios: loan applications or university admissions. We found evidence that designers may have been selective about which ethical issues – from among those they had reflected on – they recorded in the Model Cards. While participants were hesitant to grant full autonomy to the artifact to be developed, we identified they still tended to rely on a third party (outside the design team) to mediate the relationship between the system and other stakeholders. Our findings contribute to our understanding of documentation tools, their epistemic value, and how they can be leveraged to engage in a more ethically informed design process of artificial intelligence systems.

Interactive rapid prototyping combining 3D Printing and Augmented Reality

2023-07-27T14:28:17+00:00

In the development of new products by the industry, a rapid prototyping stage is recommended so that an initial version of the product can be evaluated. In this way, any necessary corrections can be applied while still in the prototyping stage, preventing design errors from reaching the final product. Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D Printing are techniques that have become ubiquitous in recent years due to the reduction of equipment costs. Several works in the area of rapid prototyping have been developed with one of these techniques in isolation; a few works have tried to unite these two tools. In this work, we propose a new functional rapid prototyping process, combining 3D Printing and AR to create functional interactive prototypes. This process is accomplished by projecting the AR onto the 3D-printed prototype. It interprets the user’s gestures on the physical prototype, converting clicks and touches into actions to be executed on the AR virtual prototype, making the prototype functional and interactive. The proposed system is evaluated by means of case studies and the application of the UEQ (User Experience Questionnaire) to users who have tested the system. This way, it is possible to evaluate the relevance of the proposed process.

Human-Data Interaction Syllabus for Undergraduate and Graduate Courses

2023-08-23T21:09:25+00:00

The phenomenon of the data deluge is a reality and the volume of data produced by people and companies is much greater than what can be handled and analyzed. Data play a crucial role in guiding the efficient utilization of technological resources for companies, aiding them in product and service management. Moreover, individuals who have become adept data producers and consumers are increasingly orienting their lives toward data. To address this evolving trend, there is a growing imperative to educate Computing professionals. These professionals are required to design technology solutions that facilitate the synergy between individuals and data, a phenomenon known as Human-Data Interaction (HDI). This paper introduces a suggested minimum syllabus for HDI courses, with the aim of addressing the key themes associated with the interaction between individuals and data. The complexity and depth of HDI topics justify a dedicated course, preventing the risk of essential content being fragmented or inadequately covered if dispersed across different courses.

An Analysis of the Evaluation Methods being Applied to Serious Games for Autistic Children

2023-09-04T12:47:00+00:00

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurodevelopment condition that significantly impacts social communication and interaction as well as behavior impairments, including restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. In recent years, numerous studies have proposed serious games as a way to aid in the therapy of children with ASD. Hence, it is crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of such games and obtain robust evidence of their positive influence on this type of treatment. In this study, we aim to explore the evaluation of games for autistic children by conducting a Systematic Literature Review. We analyze the methods utilized to evaluate these games, their application and combination, the quality aspects assessed, and the number and characteristics (e.g., age and special need) of the participants involved in the evaluation process. Furthermore, we present a compilation of the study findings for each evaluation method. Our findings reveal that there is no standardized methodology since different methods have been utilized and combined in various ways to evaluate serious games that support the treatment of ASD children. As contributions, this paper provides valuable insights into how serious games have been evaluated in this context and can be useful for researchers and game designers working in the field.

Exploring Digital Technology Adoption among Brazilian Evangelicals: A Survey and Research Agenda

2023-10-25T19:29:02+00:00

The influence of faith on users’ adoption and use of digital technologies is a relevant aspect explored in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). In the Brazilian context, a religious segment that has experienced significant growth in recent years is the evangelical community. Understanding how evangelical members have adopted and utilized digital technologies, including their experiences during religious practices such as evangelical services, is of fundamental importance. In this work, we present an exploratory study conducted in Brazil, aiming to characterize the use of digital technologies among evangelicals. We conducted a survey through a questionnaire from 107 participants from all regions of Brazil. The results revealed that digital technologies are crucial in engaging religious services and facilitating Bible reading. However, they also highlighted challenges related to spiritual experiences arising from using these technologies. Furthermore, the research identified a series of questions and promising areas for future investigations in the field of HCI and its intersection with religion. This study contributes to the understanding of the complex interaction between technology and faith and enriches discussions about the use of digital technologies in the evangelical religious context. Additionally, by presenting a detailed research agenda, we identify topics deserving deeper investigation, such as technology-mediated spiritual experiences and the cultural implications of technological adoption in religious settings. The combination of these results and the proposed research agenda provides valuable insights for researchers, HCI professionals, and members of religious communities interested in comprehending and enhancing the intersection between technology and faith.

Proposal for a gamification strategy applied to remote learning

2023-10-18T14:05:34+00:00

With the rapid and drastic evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019, interventions in the social interaction of the world population were necessary. Despite the distance from socializing, people’s routines needed to remain normal as far as possible, and this includes student learning. Thus, the solution for educational institutions was to migrate activities to the remote teaching format as an emergency. As expected, some obstacles were encountered, and others were accentuated and requiring strategies to help mitigate such problems. Several studies point to demotivation as one of the main elements that affect students in terms of low academic performance and, consequently, culminating in low learning achievement, high failure rates, and dropout rates. The objective of this study is to propose, for Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) activities, a simple gamification strategy aimed at student engagement. An exploratory literature review was carried out to identify potentially key points that could be adopted, which could influence student motivation. Based on this, the primary motivational activators for the gamification strategy were listed in Framework Octalysis. As a way of validating the technique, two not mandatory classes were taught in a remote format containing the same course content (Introductory to the Internet of Things (IoT)), differentiating between the control group (without interventions) and the group with the application of the proposed strategy of gamification. The expected result was the perception of greater engagement in the class with the application of the gamification strategy against the control class, but it was not achieved as expected. The research found that students had low participation and engagement in both traditional and gamified classes, even after intervention. This could be due to factors such as course duration, lack of collaboration, and teacher involvement. Both classes had the same completion and dropout rate (2 completions and 13 dropouts). As future works, the authors suggest interviewing students to understand the causes of demotivation and using Design Thinking, plan to investigate the root causes of low participation and develop actions for the ”Ownership and Possession” motivational activator, apply improvements to larger classes, introduce a student/monitor role, and compare gamification in regular and non-mandatory classes.

Assessing Depth Perception in Virtual Environments: A Comprehensive Framework

2023-08-04T14:36:00+00:00

Understanding humans’ perception of depth and how they interact with virtual environments is a challenging task. This context involves investigating how features of these environments affect depth perception, which is crucial for tasks like object manipulation and navigation that require interpreting spatial information. This article presents a comprehensive (general, extensible and flexible) framework to assess depth perception in different virtual environments to support the development of more effective and immersive virtual experiences. This approach can assist developers in decision-making regarding different approaches for assessing depth perception in virtual environments, considering stereoscopic and monoscopic techniques for visualization. The framework considers parameters such as the distance between the user and virtual objects and the sizes of virtual objects. Metrics such as hit rate, response time, and presence questionnaire responses were utilized to assess depth perception. The previous experiments are presented (anaglyph and shutter glasses), as well as the new experiments, considering cave environments with and without anaglyph glasses.

The Emotions and Advice in Virtual Assistants: A Dual Study on Emotion Validation and Agent Suggestions in a Gaming Scenario

2023-11-21T18:37:33+00:00

In an era where virtual assistants play an increasingly prominent role in our daily lives, this study explores the implications of their advice. We investigate the interplay between trust and virtual agents’ emotional expressions, delving into a critical aspect of human-technology interaction. Conducted through a comprehensive study comprising two interconnected phases, our research examines the dynamics between virtual agents and human decision-making. The first phase involves developing and validating a virtual robotic agent capable of conveying a spectrum of emotions. Through this, gender-based differences in emotional cue perception are disclosed, shedding light on how men and women interpret these cues differently. The second phase employs an interactive memory game, where the virtual agent operates in varied emotional states. Participants’ trust levels and perceptions are meticulously evaluated in different scenarios, ranging from accurate to erroneous agent cues. Our findings elucidate the impact of the agent’s emotional expressions on participants’ perceptions, illustrating how trust is intricately influenced by both the task at hand and the agent’s behavior. This research contributes to understanding the relationship between virtual assistants and human decision-making, emphasizing the necessity of designing more engaging and interactive virtual agents. These insights prepare future research for crafting more effective virtual assistants, fostering increased user trust and engagement.

Overpricing Analysis in Brazilian Public Bidding Items

2023-12-19T14:33:47+00:00

Analyzing overpricing in public bidding items is essential for government agencies to detect signs of fraud in acquiring public goods and services. In this context, this paper presents two main contributions: a methodology for processing and standardizing bid item descriptions and a statistical approach for overpricing detection using the interquartile range. We evaluated a comparative analysis of three distinct grouping strategies, each emphasizing different facets of the item description standardization process. Furthermore, to gauge the efficacy of both proposed approaches, we leveraged a ground-truth dataset for a thorough evaluation containing quantitative and qualitative analyses. Overall, our findings suggest that the evaluated strategies are promising for identifying potential irregularities within public bidding processes.

TeamBridge 2.0: an extensible and non-invasive middleware for control and adapting games for motor rehabilitation

2023-11-16T20:34:51+00:00

This work present the TeamBridge 2.0, a middleware able to perform the communication between digital games and hardware devices, like joysticks, mice and cameras (both rgbd and monocular). That communication does not require any modification to the game source code, allowing an old game to be adapted to work with a new hardware device. To prove this, tests were carried out with several games, including one of them being a commercial game. This middleware also allows the use of more than one device at the same time, so we can obtain more accurate information, one device can supply the deficiencies of the other. Finally, we performed tests to make sure that the middleware would not interfere with the user experience. Tests have shown that TeamBridge 2.0 can receive, interpret and send information quickly, the time varies according to the device used, getting 33ms when used with Kinect, 40ms with Leap Motion and 255ms with a DIY Data-Glove.

A User Evaluation of a Collaborator Recommender based on Co-Changed Files

2024-01-22T14:09:26+00:00

Active collaboration is essential for the success of software projects across the development life-cycle. Unfortunately, in social coding platforms, such as GitHub, it is still challenging for developers to identify potential collaborators with whom they could engage to create new/stronger ties and enhance the quality of contributions. To this end, we implemented developer recommendation strategies and prototype tool to help project contributors improve their collaborations. Thus, in this work, we described a controlled experimental study concerned usability and user satisfaction to investigate the developers’ perceptions of using CoopFinder, a prototype tool to support two strategies for recommending collaborations. These developer recommendation strategies aim to connect developers of a specific project based on their similar interests. The study involved 35 participants, 18 of which were GitHub users, and 17 were non–GitHub users. We asked participants to perform the experiment tasks to find collaborators with similar interests using a prototype recommendation tool and GitHub. We reported a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of strategies and tool using the state of the practice as a baseline. As a result, we observed that recommender based on co–changed files can provide suitable collaborator recommendations to developers of a specific project. About 66% of the participants confirmed they would use or recommend this tool.

Promoting prevention to fake news through an educational software

2023-10-23T18:09:43+00:00

This paper discusses the development of an educational system that aims to train individuals to recognize false information. The application includes a news analysis module, which highlights information that can help the user read a news story. To do this, the users simply needs to enter the link to the news they wish to analyze. In addition, the system also contains a training module, in which real examples of news stories to be analyzed by users are shown. For each news example, the user must state whether they believe the information to be true or false. The design of the product is theoretically anchored in lateral reading and inoculation theory. The tool was validated in two phases. The first involved 26 participants from different age groups and showed positive acceptance of the software, especially in terms of efficiency and attractiveness. The second phase of validation was aimed specifically at the elderly and had 16 responses, which indicated a deterioration in the user experience for this type of audience, prompting the need to enhance the application with more instructional and accessibility elements.

User perception as a factor for improving Trustworthiness in e-commerce systems

2024-02-06T15:45:17+00:00

The User Interface (UI) is the first artefact that the user interacts with while developing a sense of trust that motivates him to use software applications more effectively. A badly designed UI can deceive users and bring the system into disrepute. Trustworthiness in UI is mandatory, as a poorly implemented UI can lead to the user misusing the system and jeopardizing the expected result. Trust in computational systems involves not only technical aspects, such as computational infrastructure, storage space, and service composition, but also aspects of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). While technological aspects have received considerable attention, there are few research on human-computer interaction in terms of trust. This paper describes a way for assessing a system’s trustworthiness based on the user’s perception. The approach relies on a quality model to aggregate interface quality criteria in order to get a trustworthiness score. Three sets of experiments involving more than 300 individuals were carried out to validate the suggested methodology. A comparison was made between the trustworthiness score obtained through the methodology and the answers to open questions obtained through the users’ questionnaires. The results were consistent, and statistical analysis corroborated the positive assessment. Based on these results, examples of improvements were developed to highlight the usefulness of the approach for developing more trustworthiness interfaces.

Coffee Plant Leaf Disease Detection for Digital Agriculture

2024-02-11T14:08:15+00:00

In an effort to advance Digital Agriculture, this paper provides a comparative assessment of Artificial Neural Networks for intelligent detection of a major biotic stress factors in coffee cultivation. Through a multi-class Computer Vision task, the superior performance of Convolutional Neural Networks, notably the ShuffleNet architecture, was discerned, further substantiated by statistical analyses. This model's performance, akin to state-of-the-art solutions, was achieved with reduced training data and parameter requirements. Robustness was affirmed through external validation using alternative datasets. This contribution directly enhances coffee plantations' quality and supports the development of Edge Computing devices for Agricultural IoT.

Proposing Usability-UX technologies for the design and evaluation of text-based chatbots

2024-02-03T13:06:35+00:00

Chatbots are interactive systems that communicate using natural language with human users, via a textual interface or voice activation. These tools are useful for many spheres of business such as Customer Service, Sales, Education and Learning, Health and Entertainment. Recently, chatbots have become popular, with significant growth in the software industry, especially text-based chatbots. This is encouraging developers to create their own tools, as well as attracting efforts from researchers into this area. Despite this highlight, technologies to guarantee the quality of chatbots and user satisfaction are not keeping up with the growing demand for these tools. Considering this, there is a need to propose technologies capable of supporting developers and development teams in the process of building and evaluating chatbots. Therefore, this research proposes to develop artifacts applicable to the design and evaluation process of chatbots, based on quality attributes identified in systematic literature reviews related to Usability and User Experience (UX), due to the importance and impact that these aspects have on user satisfaction and the perceived quality of the system. The first artifact is the U2Chatbot inspection checklist, developed to assist development teams in the process of identifying defects in text-based chatbots. The second artifact is a set of interface design patterns, DP-U2Chatbot, containing useful examples to support developers in the process of building chatbots. The technologies were subjected to the necessary evaluations. The results of the empirical study regarding the U2Chatbot inspection checklist indicated that participants considered the technology useful for discovering defects in chatbots, however, ease of use could be improved. The participants' experience discreetly influenced the effectiveness and efficiency of the technique, leading us to believe that professionals with a certain level of inspection experience can benefit more from the checklist. Regarding the evaluation of DP-U2Chatbot design patterns, the results generally indicated that the technology is easy to understand and useful in supporting the design of chatbots, helping to build better tools.

The Art of Dying in a Digital World: How Death is Represented in Digital Art

2023-12-19T10:14:05+00:00

With the rise of computing, human rituals and cultural practices have increasingly interwoven with digital technologies. In this milieu, the cultural facets of death and art are particularly noteworthy. The realm of art has undergone a seismic shift due to computing, developing new artistic forms and enhancing the reach of older forms. Concurrently, aspects of death are now integrated into digital technologies, manifesting in unique ways such as the retention of data from the deceased, digital expressions of grief, online memorials, and the like. In light of this, our fundamental, qualitative, and exploratory study endeavors to map out and discuss digital art pieces that delve into themes of death, mourning, and digital afterlife. In doing so, we probe the intersection of art, death, and technology. Our findings delineate the primary methodologies and technologies employed in digital art centered around death, and the nuanced modalities through which this subject is portrayed in digital media.

An Analysis of the Authorship and Co-authorship Networks of the Brazilian Human-Computer Interaction Conference

2023-10-25T00:07:11+00:00

In Brazil, the Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC) gathers the scientific community of researchers interested in the field of Human-Computer Interaction since 1998, being the main Brazilian event in this sub-area of Computing. Over twenty-one editions, the IHC received works from researchers from different regions of the country who, over the years, have been building their own co-authorship relationships with the other authors of the Symposium. In this context, this paper analysed the IHC from the perspective of those who helped to consolidate this important national scientific event, as well as in the expansion of the Human-Computer Interaction area in the Brazilian scenario, that is, its researchers-authors. In total, 1,443 authors were identified and analysed in the study presented in this work, which considered 873 publications of three IHC tracks: Full Papers, Short Papers, and Innovative Ideas and Emerging Results. Issues related to the publications and to the co-authorship relationships of these authors over the years and in the different article tracks of the IHC were considered. In order to describe their research trajectories within the IHC itself, the study presents, in different scales of time, how these authors evolved in relation to their contributions over time. In addition, this paper analyses how the authors contributed with each other and originated the complex collaboration network of the IHC. For this, co-authorship networks and groups of authors who published together were explored, aiming to clarify the collaborations between these authors, as well as how they evolved until the edition of 2022. In this sense, this work seeks, with each research question, to simplify the presentation of results through different visualizations, which were planned and created to describe information that are not clearly evident when observing the IHC publications in a “disconnected” manner. The results of this study are revealed, described and analysed under different perspectives, as well as discussed in details in this paper.

Accessibility issues in establishing awareness on remote collaborative software development

2024-03-08T16:52:31+00:00

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the work dynamics of software development teams with the sudden adoption and subsequent continuation of remote work. New practices were adopted to maintain relationships between team members, mediated by computational tools. However, this presents an additional challenge for people with visual or hearing impairments. This study identifies different experiences of professionals with and without these disabilities in maintaining awareness when working remotely. To achieve this objective, 93 responses were collected through an online form from professionals, with and without visual or hearing impairments, and the supervision of a collaboration tool, among the most mentioned due to the lack of accessibility for people with visual impairments, using the Semiotic Inspection Method with Screen Reader (MIS-LT). The results point to different groups’ experiences with the use of collaborative tools on the social aspects of remote collaboration and an assessment of the communicability and accessibility of the inspected tool.

Handling of Personal Data by Smart Home Equipment: an Exploratory Analysis in the Context of LGPD

2024-01-29T13:18:46+00:00

This paper presents an exploratory research that analyzed the Privacy and Security Policies and the Instruction Manuals of 59 home automation equipment for Smart Home in order to verify which personal data was handled and how these documents were providing information about processes performed in personal data. The analysis was conducted with a quantitative approach followed by a qualitative analysis, using content analysis. The surveys identified the following types of personal data: Identification, Financial, Devices and Location. The results presented greater interest in identification data, although financial and location are also used in specific cases. We also concluded that the Privacy and Security Policies present several information that meets the LGPD’s guidelines, especially regarding the purpose of using the data and which personal data is used. However, there is a visible lack of information about the benefits provided to data subjects and about sharing data with third parties, such as recipient data and the legal basis for sharing data.

Application of a multicriteria decision model for the classification of Paraíba’s municipalities as to the occurrence of domestic and family violence against women

2024-02-20T23:19:14+00:00

The objective of the present work is to classify the municipalities of the state of Paraíba according to the propensity for the occurrence of Domestic and Family Violence Against Women. Data used come from the Municipal Basic Information Survey (MUNIC, in Portuguese), performed in 2019, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, in Portuguese). Additionally, the records of cases of violence from the Women’s Assistance Center (Ligue 180) were used to evaluate the classification. The ELECTRE Tri-B method was applied for the classification task, considering a set of socioeconomic criteria, to group municipalities into four classes: Low, Medium, High and Very High. The results suggest that more than 80% of the municipalities in Paraíba were classified as having a high propensity, which means that they have a lack of services and strategies to protect women, demanding, therefore, greater attention of the state for the implementation of assistance services.

Democracy out-of-the-box: analysis of compliance with constitutional principles in tax policies that use Artificial Intelligence

2024-02-18T15:00:33+00:00

The Democratic State of Law emerged with the objective of improving everyone’s life, restricting the power of tyrants, who, among other arbitrary acts, unfairly taxed the people. While taxes remain crucial for the State’s upkeep, modern rules prevent individuals from enduring excessive burdens. Although new technologies leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) hold the promise of enhancing lives, the extent of this improvement raises questions. This study delves into the relationship between individuals and the State, specifically exploring the use of AI in tax-related scenarios. Conducting a comprehensive three-stage investigation, the first stage involved surveying the reasons behind State-imposed limitations on taxation. The second stage identified criteria from computer literature addressing potential AI challenges and strategies for achieving explainability. Additionally, a discussion emphasized the importance of technological models aligning with principles that underpin our society. Then, to understand how actions have been carried out in Public Administration, a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) was carried out, analyzing works from the ACM Digital Library, SBC OpenLib (SOL) and the ENAP (National School of Public Administration)’s repository (a Gray Literature repository). On the ENAP website, works relating to the Creativity and Innovation Award from the Federal Revenue of Brazil were specifically consulted. In the end, 10 works that met the inclusion criteria were selected. It was concluded that none of them has an AI explainable model, considering the interpretability criteria of models (Rules and logic, Data visualization, and Model documentation). In light of this, it is recommended that studies addressing the use of AI in Public Administration incorporate a dedicated section discussing the explainability of models.

Exploring Irregularities in Brazilian Public Bids: An In-depth Analysis on Small Companies

2024-01-22T16:58:48+00:00

In Brazil, bidding processes constitute the main method through which the Public Administration acquires goods and services, and they aim to select the best proposal between several bidding companies. Analyzing public bids can reveal several negotiating characteristics between companies and the public sector, including alerts of fraudulent activities involving such businesses. This article presents two approaches for detecting irregularities within small companies using data extracted from public bids in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. For each approach, we perform exploratory and geospatial analysis to better understand specific characteristics of the companies with irregularity alerts. Furthermore, we execute a network analysis to examine the underlying connections between such companies. Our findings reveal the efficacy of both approaches in indicating small companies that may be involved in fraudulent activities. Our methodology and results represent a significant advance for the public sector as they have the potential to enhance mechanisms for overseeing and preventing fraud within bidding processes.

Identifying Challenges for Elementary School Teachers in Building Digital Games through a Workshop

2024-03-14T19:29:22+00:00

To develop technologies that facilitate the creation and customization of digital educational games, this research aimed to explore the use of a game authoring tool by elementary school teachers and to identify the challenges and skills of this public using the tool. Our findings indicate that most of them had difficulties using it due to a lack of digital literacy and many possible configuration settings. They struggled with the steps they needed to complete in the tutorial and understanding concepts such as events, conditions, and actions. On the other hand, they were able to easily arrange the objects in the scenes. As a result, we present a set of recommendations that can be useful to construct new tools for this audience.

Swarm Robotics surveillance control with Ant Cellular Automata Model in the Cerrado Biome for preserving biodiversity

2024-02-15T16:47:02+00:00

The Cerrado biome in Brazil plays a vital role in preserving biodiversity, providing essential ecosystem services, and supporting agriculture, making it a crucial and valuable natural resource. Sete Cidades National Park stands out for its rock formations, 10,000-year-old cave paintings and its Cerrado vegetation. The Cerrado is known for being a pyrobiome, so its patrolling becomes essential. In this context, this paper introduces a novel approach to swarm robotics patrolling in the unique ecosystem of the Sete Cidades National Park, located within the Cerrado biome. The study presents three distinct cellular automata models designed for the task, aiming to enhance the efficiency and coverage of patrolling efforts. The key difference between our model presented in this research and the previous one is our focus on a map that encompasses diverse vegetation types, specifically designed to represent the Sete Cidades National Park, with a primary goal of monitoring forest fires. The results demonstrated that the best-performing model was the Forest Tabu Inverted Ant Cellular Automata, which achieved an average of 21.77 complete patrol cycles with 95% confidence. This outcome was obtained using three robots, a tabu queue of |Q| = 80, and a maximum pheromone per cell equals to ρ = 10³. These parameters highlight the efficacy of this model in optimizing patrol cycles and the efficient use of resources for environmental surveillance in the Sete Cidades National Park, particularly in the context of fire prevention.

Development and Analysis of a Game Design Methodology applied to the Game Honor Keeper Conception

2024-04-22T18:28:51+00:00

Game design is a challenging activity that necessitates expertise and competencies from various domains. Teaching new designers involves grasping and implementing methodologies, integrating them into a particular design context, which proves to be a demanding yet essential task. In this paper, we report an experience in the conception of a game where two methodologies were analyzed and combined to describe a process with well-defined sequential activities. To verify the results with the application of this methodology, the developed game was made available for testing with real users, together with a questionnaire that sought to analyze the players’ level of satisfaction with the main aspects of the game. Based on the feedback and examination of responses from test participants, it was evident how adjusting and implementing the method positively influenced the game project in an organized and unified manner, leading to a favorable reception from users.

Gamification Techniques and Contribution Filtering in Crowdsourcing Micro-Task Applications

2024-02-03T13:36:55+00:00

The rapid expansion of the internet has led to a growing worldwide user base, with Brazil alone having approximately 83% of households connected to the network, equating to around 61.8 million households. Crowdsourcing, a production model that harnesses collective wisdom for problem-solving, has gained prominence in this digital landscape. Challenges in crowdsourcing include improving people's motivation and engagement and verifying the quality of a high number of contributions. In our research, we investigated the hypothesis that using gamification techniques, including recognition badges, feedback mechanisms, and user rankings, improves users' engagement and motivation in crowdsourcing micro-tasks applications. This paper presents ConTask, a crowdsourcing micro-task application, and two studies conducted to investigate the impact of using gamification techniques and contribution filtering as motivational factors in crowdsourcing. The first was a case study comparing two versions of ConTask: the original version and a gamified one. The second was an experimental study to evaluate the developed contribution filtering mechanism. Findings suggest that the use of gamification and contribution filtering can improve user participation in crowdsourcing micro-task applications.

On the investigation of Usability in the Caixa Tem Application

2024-03-22T18:57:48+00:00

There is a growing advancement of technologies, with an increasing number of services being carried out through them. This trend also prompts the Public Sector to join this movement by providing its services digitally, making them more convenient and cost-effective. However, the challenge arises in ensuring that everyone has equal access to these services, thereby avoiding segregation, particularly among the most vulnerable segment of society. Hence, we investigate the usability of the Caixa Tem application, which provided access to emergency aid during the pandemic. Our goal is to verify whether this application ensures usability for its users. Therefore, we assess usability through high-fidelity prototypes faithful to the real application, conducting Heuristic Evaluations, and Usability Tests with carefully selected individuals. Therefore, we are able to identify a number of usability issues regarding time and interaction efficiency, satisfaction, user experience, and effectiveness. At last, we propose a set of modifications that enhances the usability of the Caixa Tem application.

Games With Safety Training Purposes in the Industry: Game Design Method and Its Demonstration

2024-03-26T11:14:54+00:00

Work accidents are a concern for the industry as they can generate human, material, and economic losses. One way to mitigate them is to conduct efficient safety training, but they cannot always arouse the necessary interest and engagement of those trained. Games with a purpose are tools widely used for training in different contexts. They are identified as innovative, immersive, and attractive approaches, but they are complex to develop. This article presents SafetyPlay Game Design (SpGD), a structured method for designing safety training games with well-defined steps that support translating training elements into an immersive and playful game environment. Since we seek to build an artifact as an intervention to a problem in a real context, we based the research methodology on Action Research to conduct the investigations. Therefore, the intervention in the context of security training continued with creating and demonstrating the SpGD method based on the construction of a digital game for training. In this way, the evaluation undertaken in this research considered two moments: i) the ability of SpGD to develop the game, considering when we evaluated it by volunteers regarding game experience and perception of safety training, and ii) the validated method through interviews with game designers, experts in designing training games. The results point to evidence that the SpGD method supported the design of a game that allowed a positive gaming experience considered by game designers to be viable and useful for this purpose, in addition to allowing people to learn training concepts and risks. Therefore, this research contributes to the game design field and the industry, providing opportunities for creating interactive training that can complement traditional security training.

Challenges and possibilities of digital games in mathematics teaching: a situational overview of recent years in Brazil

2024-04-05T22:04:01+00:00

This paper is an extended version of the literature review already presented by the authors in SBGAMES 2023 and had as objective to investigate the possibilities and challenges that researchers face during the use of digital games in mathematics teaching in Brazilian basic education. The digital games, whether in Smartphone or Personal Computer, are example of activates that are part of the students’ life, and for being immersed in this universe they can have difficulties in the classroom, that’s why some teachers and researchers have tried to use the digital games in the classroom to make the classroom more comfortable for the students who are already immersed in the world of Information and Communication Technologies. The research object, the research string, the time, and the platforms on which the research would be conducted were defined. 129 studies were found, and after three steps of reading, six of them were selected for the data analysis. It was noticed that the students liked the activities conducted, because the game brought context to the concepts and turned possible that they could have a more open dialogue between them and with the teacher to take questions or explain the logics used to reach a certain result. It was also noted that they had challenges, but these were overcome with adaptations in the activities.

Balancing and Analyzing Player Interaction in the ESG+P Game with Machinations

2024-05-03T11:02:03+00:00

This work explores the balancing of an educational game to teach sustainable development in organizations by focusing on player interaction and employing strategies. Game success is a challenge that relies on balancing the relationships among its elements. Balancing is a complex process performed over multiple iterations, starting at game conception and continuing throughout development and testing stages. This work extends our previous case study, which did not consider player interaction for the game balancing. We built two models that contains all game mechanics using the Machinations framework. The first model includes elements that randomly produce, distribute, and consume resources, while the second model analyzes player interaction and implements four player strategies. We simulated these models in batch plays, analyzed game states, and adjusted game economies. The random model simulation achieved a victory rate of 40%, while the interactive model simulation with player strategies increased victory rates to values between 66% and 81%. These results show that player interaction and decision-making can be more decisive than randomness in achieving victory. Machinations contributed to enhancing the game, proved its usefulness for simulating complex models, and deepened our understanding of game dynamics, including player actions, potential deadlocks, and feedback mechanisms. This work supports other authors’ findings by demonstrating that balancing the game as early as possible in the development process, considering player interaction, makes the design feasible; and provides evidence that computer simulations, such as Machinations, benefit the game balance and improve the game design without the need to build a prototype and conduct extensive playtests.

Enhancing User Experience in Learning Environments: a Narrative Gamification Framework for Education

2024-02-26T18:14:54+00:00

This research explores the fertile intersection of narrative, gamification, and education, focusing on user experience (UX). Addressing a critical gap in the literature, we developed and validated a Narrative Gamification Framework for Education. The framework provides educators with tangible guidelines to gamify their lessons, emphasizing the content’s gameful transformation rather than the environment. The research contributes novel insights and practical tools to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and UX, with implications for the broader context of education. Our findings set the stage for future research, including an ongoing initiative to adapt the framework to engage teachers in a journey of recognition and learning.

Could Gameplay Data of Games with a Purpose Assist in Training Hazardous Situations in the Industry?

2024-05-15T13:13:27+00:00

Accidents and risks in the industry pose significant challenges concerning executing critical tasks. Inadequate employee training compromises the ability to manage risks, making the environment prone to accidents. In this context, games with training purposes emerge as a promising solution, providing an interactive and immersive environment. Focusing on improved risk management, organizational managers can utilize data collected by these games as metrics for monitoring and enhancement. However, it is necessary to understand how games with a purpose can contribute to the training process for hazardous situations in the industry. With this in mind, this study investigates the topic by exploring both the literature through a systematic mapping and the perceptions of workers from an oil and gas industry through a survey. As a result of the investigations, techniques for analyzing and visualizing gameplay data obtained from training games, design elements, game genres, and primary usage contexts were identified. Additionally, it was possible to analyze workers' perceptions from the oil and gas industry of how these games and their data can add value and contribute to safety training sections within their workplaces. Therefore, there were indications that games with a purpose, combined with data analysis and visualization techniques, can offer a new perspective for conducting and evaluating training, providing information that contributes to improving work quality indices and reducing severe accident risks within the industry.

How Ready for HCI? A Qualitative Analysis of the Practice of Soft Skills Related to HCI by Women Involved in the Digital Girls Program Partners Projects

2024-03-08T17:25:43+00:00

The Digital Girls Program (DGP) partner projects undertake various activities that impact their members’ academic and professional development. In this context, socio-emotional skills or soft skills can be highlighted. This article is an extension of research investigating evidence of soft skills in experiences reported by female students and coordinators participating in DGP partner projects. In the original research, soft skills relevant to Computer Science were investigated. This extension, in turn, explores soft skills specific to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). For data collection, a survey was conducted with DGP partner projects. The data analysis method employed was qualitative analysis, based on coding procedures to identify evidence of soft skills in respondents’ narratives. The actions promoted by partner projects were mapped to characterize the participating projects in the survey. As a result, leadership, professionalism, and communication were identified and are related to Computer Science and HCI. Specifically regarding HCI, evidence of critical thinking, empathy, and collaboration was identified. Thus, it is observed that women participating in partner projects develop soft skills relevant to HCI, which is a positive factor for their involvement in this field.

Unsupervised Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networks for One-Class Tasks: Exploring Early Fusion Operators

2024-04-26T12:25:58+00:00

Heterogeneous graphs are an essential structure that models real-world data through different types of nodes and relationships between them, including multimodality, which comprises different types of data such as text, image, and audio. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are a prominent graph representation learning method that takes advantage of the graph structure and its attributes that, when applied to the multimodal heterogeneous graph, learn a unique semantic space for the different modalities. Consequently, it allows multimodal fusion through simple operators such as sum, average, or multiplication, generating unified representations considering the supplementary and complementarity relationships between the modalities. In multimodal heterogeneous graphs, the labeling process tends to be even more costly due to the multiple modalities analyzed, in addition to the imbalance of classes inherent to some applications. In order to overcome these problems in applications that comprise a class of interest, One-Class Learning (OCL) is used. Given the lack of studies on multimodal early fusion in heterogeneous graphs for OCL tasks, we proposed a method based on unsupervised GNN for heterogeneous graphs and evaluated different early fusion operators. In this paper, we extend another work by evaluating the behavior of the main GNN convolutions in the method. We highlight that using operators such as average, addition, and subtraction were the best early fusion operators. In addition, GNN layers that do not use an attention mechanism performed better. In this way, we argue for heterogeneous graph neural networks in multimodal using early fusion simple operators instead of well-often-used concatenation and less complex convolutions.

ELLAS Architecture and Process: Collecting and Curating Data on Women’s Presence in STEM

2024-04-29T20:41:30+00:00

The underrepresentation of women in STEM fields needs to be highlighted through data to assist decision-makers and public policy creators in addressing the issue effectively. However, the lack of structured, organized data published openly in this domain is still a reality. To address this problem, a Latin American research network called ELLAS was created. The project's goal is to develop a platform with Semantic Web-based technologies to structure and concentrate data from Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia, initially. This paper presents the processes defined for the collection and curation of both unstructured and structured data, sourced from scientific articles, social networks, and existing open data. We explore the architecture design in a way that facilitates understanding of the details of the processes and the actors involved for each data source. We present the preliminary results from the application of these processes, and the strategies for future work, which include the data extraction and curation, and the ontology and knowledge graph development We also present some of the undergoing work, such as the survey development and application as well as showing what still hasn't been done, such as the platform development.

Peg.Ada: uncovering digital footprint’s career impact for girls

2024-04-08T19:17:15+00:00

This article introduces an educational game designed to teach girls about the concept of digital footprinting. The primary objective of the game is to impart knowledge on the significance of safeguarding their online privacy and security while encouraging responsible digital citizenship. The game's design incorporates a playful and interactive approach, integrating challenges that engage and sustain the players' interest. We envision this game as a valuable resource for educators and professionals working with girls, aiming to enhance their comprehension of their online presence. The game was applied in a workshop at a high school in Brazil, providing a hands-on opportunity for female students to use acquired concepts and stimulate meaningful discussions on digital security. The results showed that usability, gameplay, and learning issues were all well evaluated.

Development of cryptogames with Unity on an Ethereum Blockchain Test Network: Case Study and Challenges

2024-03-15T13:25:21+00:00

The development of software aligned with Web3 innovations is essential to stimulate discussions on the application of these technologies in the scientific realm. This study presents the development of a 'cryptogame,' a game that integrates blockchain technology to incorporate Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) into its functionalities. The paper explores fundamental Web3 concepts, with references to relevant literature, and details the development process, including the methodologies and models adopted. As a result, a puzzle game was created that utilizes NFTs as playable characters, allowing for the transfer of these assets between digital wallets. Furthermore, the study investigates the application of these concepts in adapting a traditional mobile game for the use of NFTs, demonstrating the necessary changes in user interface and game mechanics to support the integration with digital assets.

Pipelining Semantic Expansion and Noise Filtering for Sentiment Analysis of Short Documents – CluSent Method

2024-05-15T14:31:36+00:00

The challenge of constructing effective sentiment models is exacerbated by a lack of sufficient information, particularly in short texts. Enhancing short texts with semantic relationships becomes crucial for capturing affective nuances and improving model efficacy, albeit with the potential drawback of introducing noise. This article introduces a novel approach, CluSent, designed for customized dataset-oriented sentiment analysis. CluSent capitalizes on the CluWords concept, a proposed powerful representation of semantically related words. To address the issues of information scarcity and noise, CluSent addresses these challenges: (i) leveraging the semantic neighborhood of pre-trained word embedding representations to enrich document representation and (ii) introducing dataset-specific filtering and weighting mechanisms to manage noise. These mechanisms utilize part-of-speech and polarity/intensity information from lexicons. In an extensive experimental evaluation spanning 19 datasets and five state-of-the-art baselines, including modern transformer architectures, CluSent emerged as the superior method in the majority of scenarios (28 out of 38 possibilities), demonstrating noteworthy performance gains of up to 14% over the strongest baselines.

Foveated Path Culling: A mixed path tracing and radiance field approach for optimizing rendering in XR Displays

2024-05-14T13:39:38+00:00

Real-time effects achieved by path tracing are essential for creating highly accurate illumination effects in interactive environments. However, due to its computational complexity, it is essential to explore optimization techniques like Foveated Rendering when considering Head Mounted Displays. In this paper we combine traditional Foveated Rendering approaches with recent advancements in the field of radiance fields, extending a previous work and including recent advancements based on Gaussian Splatting. The present paper proposes the usage of mixing real time path tracing at the fovea region of an HMD while replacing the images at the peripheral by pre-computed radiance fields, inferred by neural networks or rendered in real time due to Gaussian splats. We name our approach as Foveated Path Culling (FPC) due to the process of culling raycasts, diminishing the workload by replacing most of the screen raytracing tasks by a less costly approach. FPC allowed us for better frame rates when compared to purely path tracing while rendering scenes in real time, increasing the frame rate speedup proportionally to the display resolution. Our work contributes to the development of rendering techniques for XR experiences that demand low latency, high resolution and high visual quality through global illumination effects.

Integrating Domain Knowledge in Multi-Source Classification Tasks

2024-05-27T13:08:07+00:00

This work presents an extended investigation into multi-domain learning techniques within the context of image and audio classification, with a focus on the latter. In machine learning, collections of data obtained or generated under similar conditions are referred to as domains or data sources. However, the distinct acquisition or generation conditions of these data sources are often overlooked, despite their potential to significantly impact model generalization. Multi-domain learning addresses this challenge by seeking effective methods to train models to perform adequately across all domains seen during the training process. Our study explores a range of model-agnostic multi-domain learning techniques that leverage explicit domain information alongside class labels. Specifically, we delve into three distinct methodologies: a general approach termed Stew, which involves mixing all available data indiscriminately; and two batch domain-regularization methods: Balanced Domains and Loss Sum. These methods are evaluated through several experiments conducted on datasets featuring multiple data sources for audio and image classification tasks. Our findings underscore the importance of considering domain-specific information during the training process. We demonstrate that the application of the Loss Sum method yields notable improvements in model performance (0.79 F1-Score) compared to conventional approaches that blend data from all available domains (0.62 F1-Score). By examining the impact of different multi-domain learning techniques on classification tasks, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of effective strategies for leveraging domain knowledge in machine learning model training.

Enhancing Usability Assessment with a Novel Heuristics-Based Approach Validated in an Actual Business Setting

2024-05-20T11:21:02+00:00

We have long been committed to improving Usability Evaluation and one of the proposals we have been working on the most is the use and improvement of the Heuristic Evaluation (HE) technique. With this in mind, we proposed an improvement which was tested in an experiment. This article describes an experiment carried out in a real business professional context. Fifteen usability experts from a reputable company evaluated eight websites (four supermarket and four bank platforms) using our HE proposal for the first time in real-world scenarios. This experimentation analyzed two main aspects: firstly, whether individual or group evaluations affect the final result, and secondly, whether the heuristic evaluation technique is effective in a real business and professional context. Regarding the Usability Percentage (UP) event, the results indicate that there was little difference between group and individual evaluations. The mean UP for the group was 57.88%, while the mean UP for individuals was 56.66%. The experiment provided sufficient information to suggest a new version of our HE methodology, specifically designed to improve results in real-life contexts. Furthermore, the experiment’s findings support the proposal of this new methodology, which is better suited to the business environment.

Interaction Design in Distributed Software Development: What we know and what we don’t know

2024-05-30T19:36:09+00:00

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is an area focused on human interaction with/through computational systems, among which tangent studies on interaction design stand out. In HCI, interaction design has been consolidated as a practice with the potential to support interactive systems projects. On the other hand, more and more organizations are developing software with geographically distributed teams. However, interaction design in distributed software development (DSD) has yet to be explored, mapped, or structured in the scientific literature. Although there are reports in the scientific literature about interaction design in DSD and some proposed solutions, how interaction design occurs in DSD is still being determined. In this paper, we present a summary of the results of a research that aimed to investigate how interaction design has been practiced in DSD, seeking to understand the practices, challenges, and limitations, as well as to promote and advance the state of knowledge in interaction design in the context of DSD. The research methodology was based on Charles S. Peirce's semiotic methodeutics, bibliographic research method, and mixed methods research to investigate the current state of knowledge and practice on interaction design in DSD. We hope that the results pointed out by this research contribute to the body of knowledge about interaction design at the research frontier between HCI and DSD by (i) providing an overview of research efforts on interaction design in DSD, (ii) providing an overview of the practice of interaction design in DSD, (iii) identify research gaps and discuss future research directions, and (iv) conceiving a set of recommendations for interaction design in DSD.

Exploratory testing for platform video games: strategies and lessons learned

2024-06-25T16:33:38+00:00

With the growth of the digital games market, the occurrence of bugs in games has a significant impact and generates dissatisfaction among users. Therefore, conducting tests is necessary to avoid these events and ensure the quality of the distributed product. Among the tests that are performed in games, one that is particularly effective in identifying bugs from the user's perspective is exploratory testing, but this is little covered in game testing literature, not providing new testers with guides or paths to be used for specific occasions. This paper reports an experience of applying exploratory testing strategies in 2D and 3D platform games. We selected seven well-known strategies of exploratory testing and conducted a study that involved the definition of a game testing procedure and proper adaptations for the games under test. By applying the game testing procedure, several bugs with low, medium and high severity were uncovered. The lessons learned and routines carried out in this study can be used by new testers in games of the same category, in an attempt to obtain better results.

Noise-Robust Automatic Speech Recognition: A Case Study for Communication Interference

2024-06-10T20:28:20+00:00

An Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) System is a software tool that converts a speech audio waveform into its corresponding text transcription. ASR systems are usually built using Artificial Intelligence techniques, particularly Machine Learning algorithms like Deep Learning, to address the multi-faceted complexity and variability of human speech. This allows these systems to learn from extensive speech datasets, adapt to several languages and accents, and continuously improve their performance over time, making them each time more versatile and effective in their purpose of transcribing spoken language to text. Much in the same way, we argue that the noises commonly present in the different environments also need to be explicitly dealt with, and, when possible, modeled within specific datasets with proper training. Our motivation comes from the observation that noise removal techniques (commonly called denoising), are not always fully (and generically) efficient. For instance, noise degeneration due to communication interference, which is almost always present in radio transmissions, has peculiarities that a simple mathematical formulation cannot model. This work presents a modeling technique composed of an augmented dataset-building approach and a profile identifier that can be used to build ASRs for noisy environments that perform similarly to those used in noise-free environments. As a case study, we developed a specific ASR for the interference noise in radio transmissions with its specific dataset, while comparing our results with other state-of-the-art work. As a result, we report a Character Error Rate value of 0.3163 for the developed ASR under several different noise conditions.

Learning Self-distilled Features for Facial Deepfake Detection Using Visual Foundation Models: General Results and Demographic Analysis

2024-06-26T23:01:15+00:00

Modern deepfake techniques produce highly realistic false media content with the potential for spreading harmful information, including fake news and incitements to violence. Deepfake detection methods aim to identify and counteract such content by employing machine learning algorithms, focusing mainly on detecting the presence of manipulation using spatial and temporal features. These methods often utilize Foundation Models trained on extensive unlabeled data through self-supervised approaches. This work extends previous research on deepfake detection, focusing on the effectiveness of these models while also considering biases, particularly concerning age, gender, and ethnicity, for ethical analysis. Experiments with DINOv2, a novel Vision Transformer-based Foundation Model, trained using the diverse Deepfake Detection Challenge Dataset, which encompasses several lighting conditions, resolutions, and demographic attributes, demonstrated improved deepfake detection when combined with a CNN classifier, with minimal bias towards these demographic characteristics.

Analyzing the Logistics of the Brazilian Book and Teaching Material Program: a sociotechnical strategy to inform optimization

2024-01-18T16:24:37+00:00

The National Book and Teaching Material Program, formulated and executed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and the National Education Development Fund, aims to ensure that students and teachers in Brazilian public schools have the constitutional right to access teaching materials. The program's logistics are complex, requiring the timely and cost-effective delivery of thousands of tons of teaching materials to public schools across thousands of Brazilian municipalities. A sociotechnical analysis is essential to comprehend the logistics challenges of such a program, as it enables considering social, normative, and technical aspects in a comprehensive and integrated manner. This article presents a qualitative analysis of the program logistics by applying different sociotechnical artifacts. The findings reveal a complex problem involving diverse processes and stakeholders who must adhere to several norms, adopt different computer systems, and rely on a direct and intense communication culture. Identifying key attention points and acknowledging the unique Brazilian context, the article argues that a sociotechnical perspective is crucial for understanding the problem's complexity and informing the design of solutions to optimize the program’s logistics.

Exploring Mysteries in VR: A Journey Through Brazilian Folklore and Legends

2024-06-12T23:14:11+00:00

This paper presents “Caturama VR,” an English-localized VR game that immerses players in Brazilian folklore, portraying the adventures of Caturama, a young indigenous hero. It features a VR-optimized interface, dynamic inventory management, visually captivating special effects, and first-person animated hands for deep narrative interaction within a mystical environment. Employing advanced 3D graphics, the game enriches the educational exploration of folklore, aiming to cultivate an appreciation for indigenous cultural heritage. Rigorous pre-user VR testing, conducted in-house by the development team acting as players, has significantly boosted interaction quality, gameplay balance, immersion, presence, and overall performance, laying a solid foundation for forthcoming advancements and real-user UX evaluations.

Analyzing the impact of gamification on a mHealth application for treating urinary incontinence in prostate cancer patients

2024-06-04T13:48:00+00:00

It is estimated that approximately one month after radical prostatectomy, a surgical procedure to remove the prostate, 80% of men experience urinary incontinence (UI). Behavioral therapy, which involves modifying the patient’s lifestyle habits, along with physical treatments such as exercises to strengthen the pelvic muscles and complementary behavioral therapies with techniques associated with personal beliefs, can be used to treat urinary incontinence in this context. IUProst® is a mobile health application (mHealth) designed to promote self-care and improve the quality of life for men who suffer from urinary incontinence due to prostate removal surgery caused by prostate cancer. Version 2.0 of IUProst® was released with several improvements, including adding gamification elements to encourage patient engagement in the execution of behavioral treatment exercises for urinary incontinence. This article presents the IUProst® application and analyzes the data generated by its use to understand the level of improvement that patients have experienced regarding urinary incontinence. It also examines the impact of gamification on exercise execution. The results demonstrate the clinical improvement in patients’ involuntary loss of urine, presenting less urine flow and reducing the feeling of urgency to go to the bathroom after using IUProst®. A comparative analysis is also included, considering the 60 days before and after the implementation of the gamification elements. During the 120 days considered, gamified data was collected for 60 days, and this period accounted for 83% of all exercises performed, despite the similar number of users using the application. The significant increase in exercise performance during the gamified period suggests that the gamification positively supported patient engagement.

Social-Digital Inclusion of People with Intellectual Disability: a study with the assisted of APAE in Serra Talhada

2024-01-22T14:44:58+00:00

Social-digital inclusion is a pertinent phenomenon that seeks, among other things, to ensure access and technological appropriation to individuals who are in a situation of exclusion. While research institutes have been generating valuable insights into social-digital inclusion among the general population in recent years, there remains a dearth of specific data concerning individuals with disabilities. To address this gap, this study developed a research instrument and collected data from individuals with intellectual and multiple disabilities, who represent a social group with significant e-exclusion. The research was conducted at the Association of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional in Serra Talhada. Two questionnaires were administered: one focused on household-related data and the other on specific information regarding individuals with disabilities. Fifty families participated in the first questionnaire, with twenty individuals assisted by the association completing the second. While many results align with those found in the general population, it became evident that there is a need to consider the manner in which technology is utilized—advocating for conscious and responsible use. Finally, the findings of this research can serve as a foundation for the development of institutional and public policies, as well as for further research with this population.

ARFood: an augmented-reality food diary app for asynchronous collaborative interaction

2024-04-04T03:51:35+00:00

This work presents the development and evaluation of ARFood, a mobile app for cooperation between nutritionists and patients through records in a food diary, including Augmented Reality resources, Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence for food recognition, and asynchronous collaboration. We used Unity to create the app, integrating different libraries such as LogMeal for food recognition, EDAMAM for nutritional analysis, Vuforia for augmented reality interaction, and Firebase for cloud data storage. We proceed with a pilot study with six nutritionist-patient pairs to validate the technology acceptance. Mean score results showed a medium level of acceptance by nutritionists and a satisfactory level by the group of patients (3.54 x 4.38 for perceived ease of use and 3.33 x 3.75 for perceived usefulness, Likert scale). Despite this, nutritionists and patients (83.3%) reported that they would recommend using the application as a tool for recording and monitoring a food diary. Augmented reality and computer vision proved to be outstanding resources for a Nutrition app, showing a potential usage trend as long as the insertion of more digital content and a food recognition model to recognize regional cuisine.

Which UX Research method or technique should I take? Assisting software startup professionals in making their choices

2024-04-24T19:58:53+00:00

User Experience (UX) is a field that aids in comprehending the impact of system usage on the user during the product development process. Software startups are entities that deal with cutting-edge products and experience significant growth, even in the face of unpredictability and potential market volatility. UX methods and techniques serve as tools for software start-up professionals to improve their products, establish connections with their customers, and maintain superior software quality. The goal of this paper is to present a thematic map filled with recommendations for the use of approaches, methods, techniques, and tools designed to assist software startup professionals in conducting research with users. We begin by conducting a gray literature review (GLR) on expert websites and blogs to uncover the approaches, methods, techniques, and tools most frequently referenced by industry professionals and their respective objectives. A thematic map was suggested, based on the thematic examination of the GLR findings. We created a web-based catalog named CatUX to facilitate the map’s assessment. We evaluated the catalog’s utilization by professionals from two angles: the use of the catalog and the catalog’s acceptance. The findings indicated that the catalog helped the participants select the most suitable approach, method, technique, and tool for each given scenario.

A Set of Professional Tools to Support the Design and Evaluation of Real-Time Payment Systems and Emergent Users

2024-06-25T12:53:58+00:00

The popularization of the smartphone has generated new financial technology opportunities for our society. In Brazil, with the emergence of Pix in 2020, several people are migrating to this tool to obtain new payment and income acquisition forms. However, the social characteristics of people facing longitudinal barriers, access to formal education, and computational systems must be considered to improve digital and financial access. We aim to provide a web platform, called Inclue Platform to help software developers design and evaluate their real-time payment systems promoting emergent user inclusion. The research combined a set of methodological procedures: literature review, questionnaires, interviews, two case studies and a viability test. Software development professionals, a riverside community, and residents of an Amazonian city engaged in this study. The communicability assessment method was used in the case studies. The Include Platform viability test results suggest that it can be an effective support tool for software development professionals, although its content could still be improved.

Sensation in Gamification: A Qualitative Investigation of Background Music in Gamified Learning

2024-07-26T11:51:30+00:00

Gamification in education has received significant attention for its potential to enhance student engagement and motivation. However, challenges arise from the excessive use of reward-oriented game elements, which are assumed to have negative effects on learning outcomes in many cases. In contrast, while the literature argues immersion-based gamification holds great potential, there is little research on how such an approach affects learning experiences. The Sensation game element, for instance, might contribute to students' experiences by providing sensory queues, such as auditory feedback based on background music, to foster concentration, engagement, and immersive learning experiences. Nevertheless, past studies have not sufficiently investigated how the Sensation game element affects gamified learning experiences. Therefore, this paper implements the Sensation game element in two studies: Study 1 introduced background music during a reading activity, while Study 2 implemented multiple background music tracks aligned with different learning stages to drive students' experiences. Accordingly, we evaluated this game element through usability tests, based on high-fidelity prototypes of online learning environments, followed by semi-structured interviews that were analyzed through thematic analysis with the help of ChatGPT. Overall, we found that Sensation, particularly instrumental music, positively influenced concentration but requires careful design to maintain engagement. The findings highlight the importance of tailoring Sensation's implementation to consider individual preferences and contextual factors and the need for thoughtful selection and management of sensory queues to optimize learning environments effectively. Additionally, we provide evidence emphasizing the value of using tools like ChatGPT to optimize qualitative data analysis, although human oversight remains prominent to ensure robust research outcomes. Overall, this study contributes insights for designing personalized and effective gamified learning experiences based on the Sensation game element in enhancing learning experiences.

Is My Child Safe Online? - On Requirements for Parental Control Tools in Apps used by Children

2024-07-06T19:20:35+00:00

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, children have increased their use of mobile electronic devices to access the internet. Among the main applications used by children between 9 and 17 years old are the social and communication media platforms Instagram and TikTok. Consequently, they are more exposed to risky situations (e.g. objectionable content, sexual predators, cyberbullying, etc.). To address this scenario, we conducted a systematic mapping study and a snowballing process evaluating 33 primary studies to identify recommendations and general guidelines for parental control tools, which should be part of any social media app used by children. Based on this study, we derived 16 functional (FR) and 13 non-functional requirements (NFR) for IT companies to develop features that help caregivers and children promote online protection via assertive decisions and proper safeguards. We used those functional requirements as lenses of analysis of the two main social media software platforms largely used by children: Instagram and TikTok. Our findings revealed that TikTok’s parental control features are more mature and present more options for supervising and restricting children’s online activities than Instagram’s. Therefore, this research expands knowledge about the features for parental control and raises the discussion around children’s protection and welfare as relevant digital citizens.

Inspecting the Accessibility of Chatbots and Mobile Banking for Emergent Users in the Context of People with Low Literacy

2024-07-06T19:19:16+00:00

Digital banking services are embedded in people's daily lives. Despite this, these services are not accessible to everyone for various reasons, especially for people with low literacy. The objective of this work was to develop a method of accessibility inspection in mobile banking and banking chatbots, and the examination was directed toward the public mentioned before. For this reason, two inspection sequences were carried out on five Brazilian banking applications, mediated by accessibility considerations based on literature and case studies applied in the contexts of a riverside community and around elderly people with less experience in digital technology, as well as the mapping of design considerations with the Brazilian technical standard aimed at mobile applications and the investigation of banking chatbots made available by these applications. The results found in the inspections indicate how much the design considerations are satisfied, not satisfied and partially satisfied in the inspected applications and the comparison of the two inspections carried out. Additionally, it was possible to review and evaluate design considerations and propose improvements aimed at professionals who intend to develop accessible mobile bankings, as well as the importance of making banking chatbots.

Investigating Manipulative Design on Social Media Platforms - the Case of Kidinfluencers

2024-05-26T19:13:00+00:00

The term kidinfluencer denotes children who produce entertaining content for social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. These young artists frequently publish videos or pictures that highlight their skills, pastimes or general activities in their daily routines, which draws a sizable audience. This can result in business collaborations with platform partners, providing children and caregivers with several options for income. Despite the success and fame of a few kidinfluencers, their use of social media has also sparked worries about their privacy, safety, and potential exploitation. This article explores this phenomenon from the perspective of risks brought by social media platforms, which treat children as relevant content creators but neglect their well-being and autonomy online. By mapping previous studies on the topic, we investigate the scenario of young influencers, using the notion of deceptive design patterns as a lens of analysis of platform manipulation of children’s decisions and interests. To address the identified problems caused by these patterns, we (i) present a set of prototypes as suggestions for changing platforms’ features as well as (ii) legal solutions to safeguard children’s rights and best interests online.

A Systematic Mapping Study about Technologies for Hedonic Aspects Evaluation in Text-based Chatbots

2024-07-16T15:25:31+00:00

Many studies present and evaluate daily-use systems ranging from information to conversational systems. Chatbots, either text-based or voice-based, have attracted the attention of researchers. In particular, User eXperience (UX) has been pointed out as one of the chatbot's leading aspects of evaluation involving pragmatic and hedonic aspects. Pragmatic aspects deal with the usability and efficiency of the system, while hedonic aspects consider aspects related to the originality, innovation, beauty of the system, and the user's psychological well-being. Even with existing research on usability evaluation and human-computer interaction within conversational systems, there is a clear shortfall in studies specifically addressing the hedonic aspects of user experience in chatbots. Therefore, this paper presents a Systematic Mapping Study that investigates various UX evaluation technologies (questionnaires, methods, techniques, and models, among others), focusing on the hedonic aspect of chatbots. We focused on studies with chatbots that are activated by text, although they may be able to display click interactions, videos, and images in addition to the text modality. We discovered 69 technologies to evaluate hedonic aspects of UX in chatbots, and the most frequent aspect found is the General UX . Our study provides relevant data on the research topic, addressing the specific characteristics of human-chatbot interaction, such as identity and social interaction. Moreover, we highlight gaps in the hedonic aspect evaluation in chatbots, such as a few works investigating the assessment of user emotional state.

Exploring Subjective Sleepiness with UnnCyberpsy, a Web-Based Psychophysiological Research Tool

2024-01-21T12:12:11+00:00

The foundation of scientific research lies in robust data collection methodologies, increasingly embracing a data-driven paradigm within the realm of psychological studies. This paper outlines our extensive undertaking of a psychophysiological investigation utilizing the web-based platform UnnCyberpsy for seamless data aggregation and processing. Data collection stands as a pivotal phase in scientific inquiry, with an increasing inclination toward data-centric methodologies within psychological research. This study delineates our endeavor in conducting a comprehensive psychophysiological investigation employing the web-based tool UnnCyberpsy for data acquisition and analysis. Constructed within the PHP programming framework and 'CodeIgniter' microframework (version 4.0), UnnCyberpsy offers pivotal functionalities, including scheduling equipment pick-ups, guiding through test procedures using a branched algorithm, and handling data storage and preprocessing. Each test phase is pre-coded into the system, empowering participants to independently undergo the testing regimen via personal devices. Automatic data collection, preprocessing, and storage streamline the process, ensuring comprehensive participant data validation and preservation upon experiment completion. Embracing UnnCyberpsy resulted in an elimination of data loss risk to 0%, a 30% rise in potential participant engagement, and expedited data gathering constrained solely by participant numbers and equipment availability. Our exploration underscores the pivotal role of online applications like UnnCyberpsy, not only streamlining data collection but also fostering a symbiotic environment benefiting both researchers and participants. This paradigm shift towards digital platforms stands as a beacon for future research endeavors, promising unparalleled convenience and efficiency in the realm of data-driven scientific inquiry.

Eleven years of WCAMA (2013 – 2023): A Comprehensive Descriptive and Meta-Scientific Analysis

2024-04-17T12:17:17+00:00

CSBC is the biggest scientific event dedicated to computing in Latin America, integrating Brazilian computing and driving the area in the country. In one of its satellite events, WCAMA combines computing with the management of the environment and natural resources, an essential theme for Brazil. The analysis of the last eleven years of WCAMA (2013 – 2023) exposes a relevance in the theme of beekeeping, it also notes a limited number of broad collaborations, with the most prolific authors in a low number of collaborations. Several collaborations transcend national universities, involving environmental institutes or international institutions.

The use of serious digital games to talk about grief and finitude with children: reports on the design and evaluation process of two games

2024-04-25T17:41:10+00:00

The discussion of grief and loss is often avoided, particularly when it comes to conversations involving children. The COVID-19 pandemic has tragically resulted in the loss of relatives and friends for thousands of children, bringing this topic to the forefront. Parents and caregivers have found themselves compelled to broach the subjects of death and grief with children, aiming to provide them with an understanding of the global events unfolding around them. Yet, such discussions remain steeped in taboo. Literature underscores the significance of addressing children's emotions during times of loss, offering guidance on how to navigate such experiences to mitigate the risk of long-term trauma in adulthood. This project introduces the development of two serious games tailored to assist health professionals in (1) guiding children through grief therapies and (2) initiating discussions about finitude with this specific audience. Using the SemTh methodology, which guides the design and evaluation of therapeutic digital games, a multidisciplinary team comprising Health professionals (psychologists and occupational therapists), as well as Computing professionals collaborated on the creation of these games. Implemented on the RUFUS platform, developed by these authors' research group, this platform utilizes predefined templates to guide the game instantiation. Notably, the project contributed two new templates to the platform: narrative and inverse narrative, enabling the construction of games through storytelling. The new templates on the RUFUS platform were assessed through empirical and analytical studies to allow usability and effectiveness of them.