Paper reading #35: Addressing the Problems of Data-Centric Physiology-Affect Relations Modeling

Reference Information
Title: Addressing the Problems of Data-Centric Physiology-Affect Relations Modeling
Authors: Roberto Legaspi, Ken-ichi Fukui, Koichi Moriyama, Satoshi Kurihara, Masayuki Numao, Merlin Suarez.
Venue: IUI’10, February 7–10, 2010, Hong Kong, China.

Summary

Using a data-centric approach, the researchers of this paper attempted to come up with a way to use machine learning in order to define so called "affective states". Using an EEG helmet, the researchers attempted to classify, and define the different emotions that the wearer was experiencing. One of the main problems that they ran into was the size of the data set. Throughout the paper, they suggest several different changes to the algorithms used, and change in data set size, which may help improve the capabilities of the machine.

Discussion 

I don’t know what I was thinking choosing this paper. It was very hard to read. I ended up skimming through it.. I'm sure their research is interesting, but I'm not sure if anyone is going to ever know what they actually did, judging from this paper.

Paper reading #34: Facilitating Exploratory Search by Model-Based Navigational Cues"

 

Facilitating Exploratory Search by Model-Based Navigational Cues
Wai-Tat Fu, Thomas G. Kannampallil, and Ruogu Kan
University of Illinois
Presented at IUI’10, February 7–10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

 

Summary

In this paper, the authors talk about building a simulator to test the notion that unstructured social tagging may cause difficulties for searchers. The hypothesis is based on the notion that casual tagging will eventually become an incoherent mess of tags. The counter hypothesis is that tagging isn't as random as thought, and will instead follow cohesively from whichever tags are posted earliest. That is, early tagging heavily influences the tagging of later users.

The Semantic Imitation Model was designed to simulate the actions of expert and novice users across a document space assembled for the study. The results of the simulation did seem to indicate that convergence is experienced.

 

Discussion

I really don't understand some of the simulations. I would have preferred a user study. I think that would have helped the authors better illustrates some of the arguments put forward.

Paper reading #33: Enhanced Area Cursors: Reducing Fine Pointing Demands

Reference Info:

Leah Findlater

UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New York, New York, USA

 

Summary

This paper talked about different ways to aid those users who have impairments and difficulties using the conventional computer mouse. Two different methods were discussed in the paper that would help users in this area: Click-and-Cross and Visual-Motor-Magnifier. The Visual-Motor-Magnifier enables user to enlarge area of click in order to better see and control their mouse. This allows for users to click on the intended button. This reduces the amount of fine pointing.

 

Discussion

I thought this was an interesting alternative to the constraints of clicking with the mouse.. It is interesting that they had two major methods of doing this in order to adjust to different users and their needs.

Paper reading #32: DMacs: Building MultiDevice User Interfaces by Demonstrating, Sharing and Replaying Design Actions

 

 

Reference Info:
DMacs: Building MultiDevice User Interfaces by Demonstrating, Sharing and Replaying Design Actions
Jan Meskens, Kris Luyten, Karin Coninx
UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New York, New York, USA

Summary

This paper discusses the problem of having to design different user interfaces for different platforms for the same program. An example given is YouTube. There is a separate design for the web and telephone. The more variety of platforms, the more difficult it becomes to manually code the UI for the given program. Design tool Macros (D-Macs) is a multi-device GUI builder allowing designers to automate repetitive design actions. The main goal is to automate these transitions of UI from platform to platform in an appealing way. This tool allows developers to make a UI once and have it imported to other platforms.

Discussion

I found this an interesting article. I think it will cut down on so much time of coding extra UI for different platforms. In today's world, people want to be able to use their services in a variety of platforms and this will help us achieve that.

Paper reading #31: Raconteur: from intent to stories

 

Title: Raconteur: from intent to stories

Authors: Pei-Yu Chi, Henry Lieberman

Conference: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

 

Summary

When editing a story from a large collection of media, such as photos and video clips captured from daily life, it is not always easy to understand how particular scenes fit into the intent for the overall story. Especially for novice editors, there is often a lack of coherent connections between scenes, making it difficult for the viewers to follow the story. In this paper, we present Raconteur is a story editing system that helps users assemble coherent stories from media elements, each annotated with a sentence or two in unrestricted natural language. It uses a Commonsense knowledge base, and the AnalogySpace Commonsense reasoning technique. Raconteur focuses on finding story analogies – different elements illustrating the same overall "point", or independent stories exhibiting similar narrative structures.

Discussion

The research presented is interesting The idea did not sound novel in the beginning since this is what a movie producer essentially does: arrange consecutive pictures taken a fraction of a second apart from each other. However, after looking at the screenshots I realized that while using this tool, we can arrange our pictures in order to form a story. This can help us to remember not just the location where the picture was shot but also the events that occurred and the story surrounding the picture.