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Publications

Publications by HumanISE

2023

Impact of incidental visualizations on primary tasks

Authors
Moreira, J; Mendes, D; Goncalves, D;

Publication
INFORMATION VISUALIZATION

Abstract
Incidental visualizations are meant to be seen at-a-glance, on-the-go, and during short exposure times. They will always appear side-by-side with an ongoing primary task while providing ancillary information relevant to those tasks. They differ from glanceable visualizations because looking at them is never their major focus, and they differ from ambient visualizations because they are not embedded in the environment, but appear when needed. However, unlike glanceable and ambient visualizations that have been studied in the past, incidental visualizations have yet to be explored in-depth. In particular, it is still not clear what is their impact on the users' performance of primary tasks. Therefore, we conducted an empirical online between-subjects user study where participants had to play a maze game as their primary task. Their goal was to complete several mazes as quickly as possible to maximize their score. This game was chosen to be a cognitively demanding task, bound to be significantly affected if incidental visualizations have a meaningful impact. At the same time, they had to answer a question that appeared while playing, regarding the path followed so far. Then, for half the participants, an incidental visualization was shown for a short period while playing, containing information useful for answering the question. We analyzed various metrics to understand how the maze performance was impacted by the incidental visualization. Additionally, we aimed to understand if working memory would influence how the maze was played and how visualizations were perceived. We concluded that incidental visualizations of the type used in this study do not disrupt people while they played the maze as their primary task. Furthermore, our results strongly suggested that the information conveyed by the visualization improved their performance in answering the question. Finally, working memory had no impact on the participants' results.

2023

MAGIC: Manipulating Avatars and Gestures to Improve Remote Collaboration

Authors
Fidalgo, CG; Sousa, M; Mendes, D; dos Anjos, RK; Medeiros, D; Singh, K; Jorge, J;

Publication
2023 IEEE CONFERENCE VIRTUAL REALITY AND 3D USER INTERFACES, VR

Abstract
Remote collaborative work has become pervasive in many settings, ranging from engineering to medical professions. Users are immersed in virtual environments and communicate through life-sized avatars that enable face-to-face collaboration. Within this context, users often collaboratively view and interact with virtual 3D models, for example to assist in the design of new devices such as customized prosthetics, vehicles or buildings. Discussing such shared 3D content face-to-face, however, has a variety of challenges such as ambiguities, occlusions, and different viewpoints that all decrease mutual awareness, which in turn leads to decreased task performance and increased errors. To address this challenge, we introduce MAGIC, a novel approach for understanding pointing gestures in a face-to-face shared 3D space, improving mutual understanding and awareness. Our approach distorts the remote user's gestures to correctly reflect them in the local user's reference space when face-to-face. To measure what two users perceive in common when using pointing gestures in a shared 3D space, we introduce a novel metric called pointing agreement. Results from a user study suggest that MAGIC significantly improves pointing agreement in face-toface collaboration settings, improving co-presence and awareness of interactions performed in the shared space. We believe that MAGIC improves remote collaboration by enabling simpler communication mechanisms and better mutual awareness.

2023

CIDER: Collaborative Interior Design in Extended Reality

Authors
Pintani, D; Caputo, A; Mendes, D; Giachetti, A;

Publication
Proceedings of the 15th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter, CHItaly 2023, Torino, Italy, September 20-22, 2023

Abstract
Despite significant efforts dedicated to exploring the potential applications of collaborative mixed reality, the focus of the existing works is mostly related to the creation of shared virtual/mixed environments resolving concurrent manipulation issues rather than supporting an effective collaboration strategy for the design procedure. For this reason, we present CIDER, a system for the collaborative editing of 3D augmented scenes allowing two or more users to manipulate the virtual scene elements independently and without unexpected changes. CIDER is based on the use of "layers"encapsulating the state of the environment with private layers that can be edited independently and a global one collaboratively updated with "commit"operations. Using this system, implemented for the HoloLens 2 headsets and supporting multiple users, we performed a user test on a realistic interior design task, evaluating the general usability and comparing two different approaches for the management of the atomic commit: forced (single-phase) and voting (requiring consensus), analyzing the effects of this choice on the collaborative behavior. © 2023 ACM.

2023

Exploring Pseudo-Haptics for Object Compliance in Virtual Reality

Authors
Lousada, C; Mendes, D; Rodrigues, R;

Publication
International Conference on Graphics and Interaction, ICGI 2023, Tomar, Portugal, November 2-3, 2023

Abstract
Virtual Reality (VR) has opened avenues for users to immerse themselves in virtual 3D environments, simulating reality across various domains like health, education, and entertainment. Haptic feedback plays a pivotal role in achieving lifelike experiences. However, the accessibility of haptic devices poses challenges, prompting the exploration of alternatives. In response, Pseudo-Haptic feedback has emerged, utilizing visual and auditory cues to create illusions or modify perceived haptic feedback. Given that many pseudo-haptic techniques are yet to be tailored for VR, our proposal involves combining and adapting multiple techniques to enhance compliance perception in virtual environments. By modifying the Mass-Spring-Damper model and incorporating hand-tracking software along with an inverse kinematics algorithm, our aim is to deliver compliance feedback through visual stimuli, thereby elevating the realism of the overall experience. The outcomes were encouraging, with numerous participants expressing their ability to easily discern various compliance levels with high confidence, all within a realistic and immersive environment. Additionally, we observed an impact of object scale on the perception of compliance in specific scenarios, as participants noted a tendency to perceive smaller objects as more compliant. © 2023 IEEE.

2023

Text Information Retrieval in Tetun

Authors
de Jesus, G;

Publication
ADVANCES IN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL, ECIR 2023, PT III

Abstract
Tetun is one of Timor-Leste's official languages alongside Portuguese. It is a low-resource language with over 932,000 speakers that started developing when Timor-Leste restored its independence in 2002. Newspapers mainly use Tetun and more than ten national online news websites actively broadcast news in Tetun every day. However, since information retrieval-based solutions for Tetun do not exist, finding Tetun information on the internet and digital platforms is challenging. This work aims to investigate and develop solutions that can enable the application of information retrieval techniques to develop search solutions for Tetun using Tetun INL and focus on the ad-hoc text retrieval task. As a result, we expect to have effective search solutions for Tetun and contribute to the innovation in information retrieval for low-resource languages, including making Tetun datasets available for future researchers.

2023

Current devices and Future Perspectives on Neuromuscular Blockade Monitoring: A Systematic Review

Authors
Torneiro, A; Oliveira, E; Rodrigues, NF;

Publication
2023 IEEE 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SERIOUS GAMES AND APPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH, SEGAH

Abstract
Postoperative residual neuromuscular block (PRNB) is still a problem during the surgery procedures resulting in health problems, such as, airway obstruction, hypoxia and pulmonary aspiration. To perform more accurate monitoring of the patient during surgery quantitative neuromuscular blockade monitoring measuring TOF ratio has been recommended by medical institutions. There are some devices available using different techniques, however there are only a few number of clinicians using them, since those devices are costly and have difficult clinical set-up. This paper presents a systematic review of current devices for quantitative neuromuscular monitoring during the surgery procedure following the PRISMA methodology. This study was carried out to list the currently available devices and report the capabilities that are missing in these devices since 2017. The databases used to do the research were PubMed, Cochrane Library, PubMed Central (PMC), Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). 17 articles were selected, presenting comparisons between two devices using different techniques. Quantitative monitoring provides the most accurate TOF ratio measurement but still needs to be incentivized.

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