Abstract
The use of virtual reality in training and simulation as well as the use of haptic feedback are already used in many areas such as medicine, aviation, and training in controlled environments, such as training firefighters. The purpose of this study was the creation of a virtual multisensory environment for the simulation of a training task used in the training of firemen, with the added purpose of studying the impact of the use of haptic feedback on the feeling of presence, satisfaction and performance in the task. For this study a virtual reality experiment was designed to simulate an urban fire environment, where the participants had to train one of the methods used by firefighters in these situations, and the temperature was selected for the haptic feedback. The analysis to the obtained data show that, after doing the experiment, the performance with and without haptic feedback was approximately the same and the participants showed a low error rate. Regarding the sense of presence and satisfaction, the results demonstrate that there was an improvement in the involvement and experienced realism, as well as a low cybersickness value.

Abstract
The traditional attitude towards user interfaces has changed. The Post-WIMP era has brought about novel input modalities such as touch, tangibles or gestures that allow users to manipulate digital contents more intuitively. These novel input modalities make use of the users' innate skills instead of imposing the learning of new interaction techniques. Nonetheless, there has not been a systematic evaluation on how, or if, these interfaces influence the users' performance and/or preference: distinct interfaces may be more or less appropriate regarding different age groups, user profiles, contexts or type of tasks. This work is a preliminary evaluation on whether the users' efficiency is indeed influenced by different input modalities or age. We conducted a target acquisition performance evaluation with 60 subjects to understand how different input modalities influence the speed and accuracy of three specific age groups (children, young adults and older-adults) when dealing with a continuous selection task. Three input modalities were considered to perform the task (mouse, touch and gestures) and the methodology was based on Fitts' law, a target acquisition performance evaluation model. Overall, when comparing movement times amongst the three groups, there are significant differences between age groups regarding the index of performance. We believe our findings may show that indeed the type of input modality used and the user's age could affect one's performance.

Abstract
This paper presents a case study regarding the usability evaluation of navigation tasks by people with intellectual disabilities. The aim was to investigate the factors affecting usability, by comparing their user-Web interactions and underline the difficulties observed. For that purpose, two distinct study phases were performed: the first consisted in comparing interaction using two different search engines’ layouts (Google and SAPO) and the second phase consisted in a preliminary evaluation to analyze how users performed the tasks with the usual input devices (keyboard and mouse) and provide an alternative interface to help overcome possible interaction problems and enhance autonomy. For the latter, we compared two different interfaces: a WIMP-based one and speech-based one. The main results obtained showed that users had a better performance with Google (with a simpler layout) than with SAPO (with a complex layout), and despite displaying a good keyboard handling ability, they did not show autonomy using this input device (due to the need for reading/writing when handling this device). In this perspective, Google’s speech recognition application could indeed be considered an alternative for interaction. However, we found that the speech recognition interface is not as robust as it should be: it could be more precise and less prone to errors due to poor word pronunciation. After this two-phased study, we think we may be able to infer some recommendations to be used by developers in order to create more intuitive layouts for easy navigation regarding this group of people, and thereby facilitate digital inclusion. © 2016 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Abstract
Technological evolution has led to a significant transformation in tourism organizations, particularly in those who focus their activities on particular themes or segments, such as wine tourism. This can be transposed to Portuguese wine tourism organizations because the majority lack the necessary information and communication technologies (and inherent technologies) to become globally competitive. As highlighted in the literature, for a tourism experience to become memorable it must be emotional and immersive in such a way that the tourist becomes fully involved with the existing surroundings. This leads to the notion of using virtual reality experiences as triggers for the development of wine tourism. Considering the relevance of Portugal's Douro Valley to the country's wine tourism segment, a theoretical model that supports the implementation of multisensory (hence more immersive) virtual wine tourism experiences is developed. While considering the international success of Port wine tourism, this paper also presents a conceptualization of a multisensory virtual Port wine experience that includes a conceptual perspective and a technological solution proposal.

Abstract

Abstract
E-commerce website owners rely heavily on analysing and summarising the behaviour of costumers, making efforts to influence user actions and optimize success metrics. Machine learning and data mining techniques have been applied in this field, greatly influencing the Internet marketing activities. When faced with a new e-commerce website, the data scientist starts a process of collecting real-time and historical data about it, analysing and transforming this data in order to get a grasp into the website and its users. Data scientists commonly resort to tracking domain-specific events, requiring code modification of the web pages. This paper proposes an alternative approach to retrieve information from a given e-commerce website, collecting data from the site's structure, retrieving semantic information in predefined locations and analysing user's access logs, thus enabling the development of accurate models for predicting users' future behaviour. This is accomplished by the application of a web mining process, comprehending the site's structure, content and usage in a pipeline, resulting in a web graph of the website, complemented with a categorization of each page and the website's archetypical user profiles. 1877-0509 (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.