In close relationships, snooping on device is commonly regarded as an invasion of privacy. The pr... more In close relationships, snooping on device is commonly regarded as an invasion of privacy. The prevalence of such behavior is, however, difficult to assess. We compared two in-person survey techniques, one in which the question about snooping behavior is posed directly, and one in which strong anonymity controls are employed. Results (n=90) reveal that, while in the first case 10% of respondents admitted to snooping, in the second the estimate was 60%. This shows that, although there is a potent social desirability bias at play, strong anonymity controls do improve estimates. Furthermore, it suggests an alarming prevalence of snooping behavior among the target population.
This paper presents a couple of components, within the SCOPE tool-set, that support psychotherapy... more This paper presents a couple of components, within the SCOPE tool-set, that support psychotherapy processes on mobile and consultation settings. The first one provides to the patients the required access to psychotherapy artefacts, enabling an adequate and tailored aid and motivation for fulfilment of common therapy tasks. The second one offers to the therapists the ability to define and refine the artefacts, in order to present, help and react to the patient according to his/her specific needs and therapy status. Both components run on a PDA base and were developed within a contextual design approach. Preliminary evaluation results are available that validated some of the choices (e.g. PDA based choice, auto-fill fields, patient incentives), and indicate future directions and improvements (e.g. definition of incentive scales and adjustment, other therapist-consultation devices).
Proceedings of the 15th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016
Nowadays, there has been a continual increase in life expectancy in almost all countries of the w... more Nowadays, there has been a continual increase in life expectancy in almost all countries of the world and the number of elderly people has grown considerably. However, the number of professional support (e.g. caregivers) to people with dementia is not growing proportionally. One of the possible ways to ease the overburden of these professionals is to use technological tools. In this scenario, the goal of this paper is to identify the real needs of these users, and propose an application called Day2Day who could understand such needs. A questionnaire was applied to 17 professionals who evaluated the tool and the use of information visualization techniques in this context. Further the results indicate that the information visualization techniques enable the development of more intuitive interfaces, enabling the collection of data more quickly.
Exercising is an activity in which the presence of others can motivate an individual to surpass h... more Exercising is an activity in which the presence of others can motivate an individual to surpass his / her own limits. In recent years, technology has changed the way we carry out these activities. User commitment has been shown to be dependent on, among other, peer pressure. The introduction of challengeable virtual opponents broadened the spectrum of possibilities, enabling users to be motivated by either a real or virtual partner. In this paper we present an early assessment of the impact that different types of presence exerts on the users' perceived motivation and competitiveness. In particular, we delve into how virtual entities compare to their real counterparts. We carried out an experiment in which we sought at obtaining amateur athletes perceptions on their motivation and competitiveness when exercising against real and virtual opponents. Results serve not only the purpose of showing that different types of presence counterbalance each other but they also validate a design space for physical and social partners in exertion applications in which our hypothesis are based upon.
Business & Information Systems Engineering, 2017
Most business process modeling tools used today encourage the rendition of lean, prescribed and c... more Most business process modeling tools used today encourage the rendition of lean, prescribed and clearly coordinated activities, which often clash with far more intricate business realities. This paper evaluates an alternative approach that adopts concepts from storytelling and sense-making theories to elicit process stories. The viability of this approach is tested in a case study involving sixteen individuals from the same organization who tell their personal views about a business process, thus gathering a total of twenty process stories. The obtained results suggest that process stories may increase the meaningfulness, contextualization and overall richness of process models.
Cognitive behavioral therapy and social competences and skills training sometimes rely on in-situ... more Cognitive behavioral therapy and social competences and skills training sometimes rely on in-situ activities to improve the patients' condition. As the process evolves, therapists concede some autonomy to patients, allowing them to carry out those activities without the need for the former's presence. The ability to remotely track patient's activities provides an interesting solution to ensure their success, still encouraging their autonomy. This paper presents the design process and evaluation of a remote group monitoring and communication system for these two types of procedures. We use traditional group communication directives and augment them with georeferenced information, empowering therapists with critical data to track their patients live and remotely. We describe the design process of a high-fidelity prototype and discuss the results from an experimental study that assessed the system from a usability and functionality perspectives. Results fueled an interesting discussion regarding how geo-referenced information help users maintaining awareness when multi-tasking.
User interfaces that allow the direct manipulation of conceptual objects with adequate semantic f... more User interfaces that allow the direct manipulation of conceptual objects with adequate semantic feedback are not su ciently supported by the user interface tools of today. W e h a ve designed a layered architecture for user interface objects based upon the de nition of a three dimensional object space for object manipulation. In this space the usual user centered events are replaced by a logical manipulation "feel" which is symmetrically applied from one object to another. We also consider the consequences of having multiple views of one object in such a n o b j e c t space. An example class de nition in C++ gives an example of how t o work with our objects.
Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference on - W4A '14, 2014
The International Web for All Conference (W4A) began in 2004 as a workshop aiming to make the Wor... more The International Web for All Conference (W4A) began in 2004 as a workshop aiming to make the World Wide Web accessible for people with disabilities. Over the next ten years, the workshop grew into the top conference for web accessibility research, attracting a diverse crowd from academia, industry, government, and non-proft organizations. W4A has become the venue for scientists, students, and practitioners from around the world to showcase their latest research, widen their perspectives through discussions with their peers, and establish future research agendas.
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Proceedings, 2014
When teaching in university courses, one of the main problems is the students' lack of motiva... more When teaching in university courses, one of the main problems is the students' lack of motivation for everyday study. Learning management systems (LMS) provide a set of tools that students must handle to follow the course, but usually students need additional aid to effectively mastering these tools. We present here Merlin-Know, a new module for the Moodle LMS to help students do extra work and reviewing on-line. It is based on a virtual teacher who guides, motivates and encourages students. We also show two kinds of evaluation. First, the system was used for revising the activities of students along the semester. We conclude that Merlin-Know has a statistically positive influence on students' learning outcomes, obtaining a positive correlation for all difficulty levels. Second, we conducted a usability evaluation to assess the acceptance by students' and to detect ways of improvement. Average students said that Merlin-Know was useful and helped them to be more effective and productive, it was easy to learn and use and it has a friendly interface, and they easily remembered how to use it.
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Proceedings, 2014
In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where st... more In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where students are the focus of the educational process. An instantiation of these learning methods are gaming environments. We present ProGames, a system for learning programming skills through a leveled set of visually-attractive and interactive programming games in Greenfoot, categorized by student's likes, offering them solutions to sets of problems that they really enjoy or like most. We present a combined evaluation of usability (first) done during the academic course 2012-13 in three Computer Science Degrees and an evaluation of appealing for the students (second) based on the organization in games categories done during the academic course 2013-14. The combination of both evaluations suggests that offering students a set of serious games that meets their likes really increases their appeal for the games and therefore for learning with them. We present this experience to encourage academia to propose their students learning materials which really are appealing to them and why not? Fun.
This paper presents an exploration into the effects of specific types of persuasive technology in... more This paper presents an exploration into the effects of specific types of persuasive technology in videogames according to a performance and a physiological perspective. Persuasive mechanisms are often employed to change the behavior of a determined person during a known time frame. In videogames, these approaches are expected to produce results in a more limited time window especially concerning the player's performance. Literature regarding how this type of persuasive mechanisms affects a user during a game is scarce. We conducted a set of experiments with different games, on distinct platforms and with thirty individuals per experimental period. Results suggest that different persuasive techniques can effectively be used to improve or decrease player performance as well as to regulate physiological state. We provide a detailed analysis of these results along with a thorough discussion regarding the design implications and opportunities of these findings and how they are related with existing literature in the area.
This paper presents a couple of tool-sets that allows the management of group therapy sessions, f... more This paper presents a couple of tool-sets that allows the management of group therapy sessions, for a single room with a large public display setting. These sessions involve several patients, a main therapist and eventually a second therapist. Information is created, exchanged and discussed between them during those sessions. All participants recur to different devices to perform their activities, from PDAs to PCs, through an interactive large display, if available. Devices are selected and tool-sets designed adequately for each setting and participant role. For the main therapist, the variant with an interactive large display, required the simultaneous usage of a complimentary devices, to cope with non-public aspects of the therapy. Preliminary evaluation rose interesting, one hand usage issues for that variant.
This paper presents the design process of a geo-referenced communication system which aims at pro... more This paper presents the design process of a geo-referenced communication system which aims at providing technological support to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Social Competences and Skills Training therapeutic procedures. The usage of geo-spatial information while communicating between therapists and patients can be critical, particularly in in-vivo sessions, to identify locations which evoke negative experiences to patients or to encourage the latter to overcome obstacles. We show a high-fidelity prototype multi-iteration design process and complement the discussion with the results from an experimental period which aimed at assessing the system from a usability, user satisfaction and functionality perspectives. Results were positive and led to the revision and ultimately the final design iteration which is reported here. We present the rationale behind these design choices, discuss the advantages over existing similar tools, analyze possible challenges and comment on the fulfillment of providing seamless context to scenarios where such information is paramount.
Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education - ITiCSE '14, 2014
In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where st... more In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where students are the focus of the educational process. An instantiation of these learning methods are gaming environments. We present ProGames, a system for learning programming skills through a leveled set of visually-attractive and interactive programming games in Greenfoot, categorized by student's likes offering them solutions to sets of problems that they really enjoy or like most. The system has been evaluated during the academic course 2012-13 in three Computer Science Degrees and our results indicate that using ProGames had a most positive influence in the students learning. Moreover, the subjective opinion of students reflects that they really enjoyed working with the system and increased the engagement with the course.
Computer Assisted Therapy is an applied and research field that has been rapidly evolving hand in... more Computer Assisted Therapy is an applied and research field that has been rapidly evolving hand in hand with the advances of technology. In particular, the mass adoption of the internet and computers as tools to support several types of approaches has shown good results for a wide assortment of issues [1]. These technologies, primarily used to support therapists and clinicians while managing their records, accessing local or remote information [1][2], have more recently, and most importantly, been growingly used to serve patients as well, either independently or as a support for cooperation between patient and therapists. Amongst the existing examples, one can find simple registration (e.g., amount of cigarettes per day) diaries, short text-based tests or basic procedures and guidelines [3] or more advanced systems offering some support for personalization within the used tools [4] and data exchange between actors. However, traditionally, the majority of these tools requires some computer usage skills from both actors and is usually destined to adults or young adults. For teenagers and, most importantly, for children, who are also frequently in need of support and therapeutic aid, the number of existing tools is very low [5]. Requirements for applications directed toward children are significantly different from those that are oriented toward adults [6] and, in a vast majority of situations, adult oriented applications are not adequate to younger patients. This book chapter addresses the specific needs and requirements that technology must abide to when used in support of therapy for children and teenagers, focusing mainly on Cognitive Behavioral Approaches for the treatment of internalizing disorders like depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and somatic or physical problems [7].It provides an overview of existing approaches and systems and describes in detail two existing systems that aim at offering therapists, and their patients, tailored tools for the support of individual and group approaches for these disorders.
The editing and analysis of large concept maps requires techniques that focus simultaneously on d... more The editing and analysis of large concept maps requires techniques that focus simultaneously on different areas of the diagrams. These maps are often built as graph-based diagrams in which relations are one of the primary objects of study. Therefore, smooth transition between views focussing over different areas is needed and not supported by currently available techniques and tools. This paper proposes a technique, named Integrated Multi-Views (IMV), to address this issue. The technique offers an articulated coherence between component views, allowing arcs to flow independently of view boundaries. Redundant and irrelevant information is also automatically eliminated. IMV further permits the modification and navigation of views, supporting overlapping areas of focus in the underlying working diagram. The article initially presents the context and background work. In particular, it briefly describes a couple of tools where the technique was applied. Then, the problems with existing methods are discussed and the proposed solution is described. Finally, related work is presented and conclusions are drawn.
In close relationships, snooping on device is commonly regarded as an invasion of privacy. The pr... more In close relationships, snooping on device is commonly regarded as an invasion of privacy. The prevalence of such behavior is, however, difficult to assess. We compared two in-person survey techniques, one in which the question about snooping behavior is posed directly, and one in which strong anonymity controls are employed. Results (n=90) reveal that, while in the first case 10% of respondents admitted to snooping, in the second the estimate was 60%. This shows that, although there is a potent social desirability bias at play, strong anonymity controls do improve estimates. Furthermore, it suggests an alarming prevalence of snooping behavior among the target population.
This paper presents a couple of components, within the SCOPE tool-set, that support psychotherapy... more This paper presents a couple of components, within the SCOPE tool-set, that support psychotherapy processes on mobile and consultation settings. The first one provides to the patients the required access to psychotherapy artefacts, enabling an adequate and tailored aid and motivation for fulfilment of common therapy tasks. The second one offers to the therapists the ability to define and refine the artefacts, in order to present, help and react to the patient according to his/her specific needs and therapy status. Both components run on a PDA base and were developed within a contextual design approach. Preliminary evaluation results are available that validated some of the choices (e.g. PDA based choice, auto-fill fields, patient incentives), and indicate future directions and improvements (e.g. definition of incentive scales and adjustment, other therapist-consultation devices).
Proceedings of the 15th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016
Nowadays, there has been a continual increase in life expectancy in almost all countries of the w... more Nowadays, there has been a continual increase in life expectancy in almost all countries of the world and the number of elderly people has grown considerably. However, the number of professional support (e.g. caregivers) to people with dementia is not growing proportionally. One of the possible ways to ease the overburden of these professionals is to use technological tools. In this scenario, the goal of this paper is to identify the real needs of these users, and propose an application called Day2Day who could understand such needs. A questionnaire was applied to 17 professionals who evaluated the tool and the use of information visualization techniques in this context. Further the results indicate that the information visualization techniques enable the development of more intuitive interfaces, enabling the collection of data more quickly.
Exercising is an activity in which the presence of others can motivate an individual to surpass h... more Exercising is an activity in which the presence of others can motivate an individual to surpass his / her own limits. In recent years, technology has changed the way we carry out these activities. User commitment has been shown to be dependent on, among other, peer pressure. The introduction of challengeable virtual opponents broadened the spectrum of possibilities, enabling users to be motivated by either a real or virtual partner. In this paper we present an early assessment of the impact that different types of presence exerts on the users' perceived motivation and competitiveness. In particular, we delve into how virtual entities compare to their real counterparts. We carried out an experiment in which we sought at obtaining amateur athletes perceptions on their motivation and competitiveness when exercising against real and virtual opponents. Results serve not only the purpose of showing that different types of presence counterbalance each other but they also validate a design space for physical and social partners in exertion applications in which our hypothesis are based upon.
Business & Information Systems Engineering, 2017
Most business process modeling tools used today encourage the rendition of lean, prescribed and c... more Most business process modeling tools used today encourage the rendition of lean, prescribed and clearly coordinated activities, which often clash with far more intricate business realities. This paper evaluates an alternative approach that adopts concepts from storytelling and sense-making theories to elicit process stories. The viability of this approach is tested in a case study involving sixteen individuals from the same organization who tell their personal views about a business process, thus gathering a total of twenty process stories. The obtained results suggest that process stories may increase the meaningfulness, contextualization and overall richness of process models.
Cognitive behavioral therapy and social competences and skills training sometimes rely on in-situ... more Cognitive behavioral therapy and social competences and skills training sometimes rely on in-situ activities to improve the patients' condition. As the process evolves, therapists concede some autonomy to patients, allowing them to carry out those activities without the need for the former's presence. The ability to remotely track patient's activities provides an interesting solution to ensure their success, still encouraging their autonomy. This paper presents the design process and evaluation of a remote group monitoring and communication system for these two types of procedures. We use traditional group communication directives and augment them with georeferenced information, empowering therapists with critical data to track their patients live and remotely. We describe the design process of a high-fidelity prototype and discuss the results from an experimental study that assessed the system from a usability and functionality perspectives. Results fueled an interesting discussion regarding how geo-referenced information help users maintaining awareness when multi-tasking.
User interfaces that allow the direct manipulation of conceptual objects with adequate semantic f... more User interfaces that allow the direct manipulation of conceptual objects with adequate semantic feedback are not su ciently supported by the user interface tools of today. W e h a ve designed a layered architecture for user interface objects based upon the de nition of a three dimensional object space for object manipulation. In this space the usual user centered events are replaced by a logical manipulation "feel" which is symmetrically applied from one object to another. We also consider the consequences of having multiple views of one object in such a n o b j e c t space. An example class de nition in C++ gives an example of how t o work with our objects.
Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference on - W4A '14, 2014
The International Web for All Conference (W4A) began in 2004 as a workshop aiming to make the Wor... more The International Web for All Conference (W4A) began in 2004 as a workshop aiming to make the World Wide Web accessible for people with disabilities. Over the next ten years, the workshop grew into the top conference for web accessibility research, attracting a diverse crowd from academia, industry, government, and non-proft organizations. W4A has become the venue for scientists, students, and practitioners from around the world to showcase their latest research, widen their perspectives through discussions with their peers, and establish future research agendas.
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Proceedings, 2014
When teaching in university courses, one of the main problems is the students' lack of motiva... more When teaching in university courses, one of the main problems is the students' lack of motivation for everyday study. Learning management systems (LMS) provide a set of tools that students must handle to follow the course, but usually students need additional aid to effectively mastering these tools. We present here Merlin-Know, a new module for the Moodle LMS to help students do extra work and reviewing on-line. It is based on a virtual teacher who guides, motivates and encourages students. We also show two kinds of evaluation. First, the system was used for revising the activities of students along the semester. We conclude that Merlin-Know has a statistically positive influence on students' learning outcomes, obtaining a positive correlation for all difficulty levels. Second, we conducted a usability evaluation to assess the acceptance by students' and to detect ways of improvement. Average students said that Merlin-Know was useful and helped them to be more effective and productive, it was easy to learn and use and it has a friendly interface, and they easily remembered how to use it.
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Proceedings, 2014
In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where st... more In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where students are the focus of the educational process. An instantiation of these learning methods are gaming environments. We present ProGames, a system for learning programming skills through a leveled set of visually-attractive and interactive programming games in Greenfoot, categorized by student's likes, offering them solutions to sets of problems that they really enjoy or like most. We present a combined evaluation of usability (first) done during the academic course 2012-13 in three Computer Science Degrees and an evaluation of appealing for the students (second) based on the organization in games categories done during the academic course 2013-14. The combination of both evaluations suggests that offering students a set of serious games that meets their likes really increases their appeal for the games and therefore for learning with them. We present this experience to encourage academia to propose their students learning materials which really are appealing to them and why not? Fun.
This paper presents an exploration into the effects of specific types of persuasive technology in... more This paper presents an exploration into the effects of specific types of persuasive technology in videogames according to a performance and a physiological perspective. Persuasive mechanisms are often employed to change the behavior of a determined person during a known time frame. In videogames, these approaches are expected to produce results in a more limited time window especially concerning the player's performance. Literature regarding how this type of persuasive mechanisms affects a user during a game is scarce. We conducted a set of experiments with different games, on distinct platforms and with thirty individuals per experimental period. Results suggest that different persuasive techniques can effectively be used to improve or decrease player performance as well as to regulate physiological state. We provide a detailed analysis of these results along with a thorough discussion regarding the design implications and opportunities of these findings and how they are related with existing literature in the area.
This paper presents a couple of tool-sets that allows the management of group therapy sessions, f... more This paper presents a couple of tool-sets that allows the management of group therapy sessions, for a single room with a large public display setting. These sessions involve several patients, a main therapist and eventually a second therapist. Information is created, exchanged and discussed between them during those sessions. All participants recur to different devices to perform their activities, from PDAs to PCs, through an interactive large display, if available. Devices are selected and tool-sets designed adequately for each setting and participant role. For the main therapist, the variant with an interactive large display, required the simultaneous usage of a complimentary devices, to cope with non-public aspects of the therapy. Preliminary evaluation rose interesting, one hand usage issues for that variant.
This paper presents the design process of a geo-referenced communication system which aims at pro... more This paper presents the design process of a geo-referenced communication system which aims at providing technological support to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Social Competences and Skills Training therapeutic procedures. The usage of geo-spatial information while communicating between therapists and patients can be critical, particularly in in-vivo sessions, to identify locations which evoke negative experiences to patients or to encourage the latter to overcome obstacles. We show a high-fidelity prototype multi-iteration design process and complement the discussion with the results from an experimental period which aimed at assessing the system from a usability, user satisfaction and functionality perspectives. Results were positive and led to the revision and ultimately the final design iteration which is reported here. We present the rationale behind these design choices, discuss the advantages over existing similar tools, analyze possible challenges and comment on the fulfillment of providing seamless context to scenarios where such information is paramount.
Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education - ITiCSE '14, 2014
In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where st... more In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where students are the focus of the educational process. An instantiation of these learning methods are gaming environments. We present ProGames, a system for learning programming skills through a leveled set of visually-attractive and interactive programming games in Greenfoot, categorized by student's likes offering them solutions to sets of problems that they really enjoy or like most. The system has been evaluated during the academic course 2012-13 in three Computer Science Degrees and our results indicate that using ProGames had a most positive influence in the students learning. Moreover, the subjective opinion of students reflects that they really enjoyed working with the system and increased the engagement with the course.
Computer Assisted Therapy is an applied and research field that has been rapidly evolving hand in... more Computer Assisted Therapy is an applied and research field that has been rapidly evolving hand in hand with the advances of technology. In particular, the mass adoption of the internet and computers as tools to support several types of approaches has shown good results for a wide assortment of issues [1]. These technologies, primarily used to support therapists and clinicians while managing their records, accessing local or remote information [1][2], have more recently, and most importantly, been growingly used to serve patients as well, either independently or as a support for cooperation between patient and therapists. Amongst the existing examples, one can find simple registration (e.g., amount of cigarettes per day) diaries, short text-based tests or basic procedures and guidelines [3] or more advanced systems offering some support for personalization within the used tools [4] and data exchange between actors. However, traditionally, the majority of these tools requires some computer usage skills from both actors and is usually destined to adults or young adults. For teenagers and, most importantly, for children, who are also frequently in need of support and therapeutic aid, the number of existing tools is very low [5]. Requirements for applications directed toward children are significantly different from those that are oriented toward adults [6] and, in a vast majority of situations, adult oriented applications are not adequate to younger patients. This book chapter addresses the specific needs and requirements that technology must abide to when used in support of therapy for children and teenagers, focusing mainly on Cognitive Behavioral Approaches for the treatment of internalizing disorders like depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and somatic or physical problems [7].It provides an overview of existing approaches and systems and describes in detail two existing systems that aim at offering therapists, and their patients, tailored tools for the support of individual and group approaches for these disorders.
The editing and analysis of large concept maps requires techniques that focus simultaneously on d... more The editing and analysis of large concept maps requires techniques that focus simultaneously on different areas of the diagrams. These maps are often built as graph-based diagrams in which relations are one of the primary objects of study. Therefore, smooth transition between views focussing over different areas is needed and not supported by currently available techniques and tools. This paper proposes a technique, named Integrated Multi-Views (IMV), to address this issue. The technique offers an articulated coherence between component views, allowing arcs to flow independently of view boundaries. Redundant and irrelevant information is also automatically eliminated. IMV further permits the modification and navigation of views, supporting overlapping areas of focus in the underlying working diagram. The article initially presents the context and background work. In particular, it briefly describes a couple of tools where the technique was applied. Then, the problems with existing methods are discussed and the proposed solution is described. Finally, related work is presented and conclusions are drawn.
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Papers by Luís Carriço