| Human Computer Interaction and societal impact -- Can HCI influence public policy making and IT politics? | | BIBAK | PDF | 1-4 | |
| Gulliksen Jan | |||
| Digitalization is a concept to encompass the fastest growing trend for
societal development of modern times. Digitalization happens everywhere, in
schools, in business, in health care and in our private life. The
digitalization gives also opportunities for political decisions and policy
making to support turning our society into a modern and efficient society.
Research and research funding organizations are becoming more and more aware of
the need to conduct research that proves some form of utility to the society
and has some form of practical impact. There are several different ways of
making research that has practical relevance and that can contribute to
changing and improving society. This keynote paper aims at discussing ways to
plan, conduct research with the aim of improving the society and also show how
we should make use of our research knowledge and positions to influence
politics and public policy making. Keywords: Digitalization; policymaking, usability, accessibility | |||
| Social Computing, HCI, Social Change and Peace | | BIBAK | PDF | 5-10 | |
| Zaphiris Panayiotis | |||
| This paper reports work regarding the design, development and evaluation of
a surface computing application to support collaborative decision making. The
domain-independent application, so called Ideas Mapping, builds on the
principle of Affinity Diagramming to allow participants to analyze a problem
and brainstorm around possible solutions while they actively construct a
consensus artifact -- a taxonomy of their ideas. During idea generation, Ideas
Mapping replicates physical post-it notes on a multi-touch tabletop. Additional
functionality supports student collaboration and interaction around the
organization of ideas into thematic categories associated with the problem at
hand. We report on the functionality and user experience while interacting with
the application which was designed and developed using a user-centered
approach. We also report initial findings regarding the affordances of surface
computing for collaborative decision making. Keywords: surface computing, user experience, collaborative decision making, CSCL | |||
| Multi-Criteria Decision Making Software Products -- A Comparison and Ranking in Terms of Usability and Functionality | | BIBAK | PDF | 11-14 | |
| Constanta Zoie Radulescu; Alexandru Balog; Lidia Bajenaru; Delia Mihaela Radulescu | |||
| A large number of multi criteria decision making (MCDM) software products
have been developed in academia and business. The selection of the appropriate
MCDM software product to solve a given decision problem is a difficult task.
Users need adequate MCDM software that meets quality standards regarding
usability and functionality, utility, reliability and computer efficiency. In
this paper we make a comparison of six MCDM software products regarding
usability and functional suitability. Then we rank the MCDM software products
included in comparison, first for criteria of usability and functionality and
second only for criteria of usability. Ranking the six MCDM software products
is a multi-criteria problem itself. Keywords: Multi criteria decision making; Usability; Software Quality; Functional
Suitability; Alternatives; Criteria | |||
| Seeking New Insights: A Design Thinking Approach to the Development of Persuasive Technology Aimed at Supporting Clients on a Weight Management Program | | BIBAK | PDF | 15-20 | |
| Paul Doney; Marc Fabri | |||
| The application of persuasive technology has been shown to be effective in a
weight management context. However, it has been observed that the impact is not
as significant as predicted. The aim of this project was to investigate whether
a Design Thinking approach could generate new insights that could be used to
drive the development of an innovative application to help people on their
weight management journey. Findings show that although no radically new user
needs were identified, the needs that users did express most pertinently are
not effectively met by currently available technology. Further, we examined the
Design Thinking approach itself and sought to identify criteria for the design
of successful insight gathering activities, through end-user engagement. We
summarize these at the end of this paper. Keywords: Persuasive technology; design thinking, weight management, service design,
behavior change | |||
| A Motivational Model for Facebook Acceptance by University Students | | BIBAK | PDF | 21-24 | |
| Dragos Daniel Iordache; Alexandru Balog; Costin Pribeanu; Vincentas Lamanauskas | |||
| As social networking websites become more and more widespread there is an
increasing interest to analyze and explain their usage. Facebook is a web-based
service that is very popular among university students. In this paper a
motivational model is presented that explains Facebook acceptance by university
students with two key factors: perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment.
The results show that perceived enjoyment is a stronger determinant than
perceived usefulness. Keywords: Facebook, motivational model, TAM, structural equation modeling | |||
| Accessibility of Romanian Municipal Websites -- Conformance with WCAG2 | | BIBAK | PDF | 25-28 | |
| Costin Pribeanu; Maria Gheorghe-Moisii; Paul Fogarassy-Neszly | |||
| Several initiatives at European level exist that promote e-inclusion and web
accessibility. Despite all concerns, the accessibility of municipal websites is
still low. This paper presents a study regarding the conformance of 60
municipal websites in 2014 with WCAG2 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). A
comparison of results with similar data in 2011 shows a decrease in web
accessibility that could be explained by the lack of regulations at national
level and bad practices in web development. Moreover, the evaluation revealed
instability of results in time which makes it difficult assessing the progress. Keywords: Web accessibility, WCAG2, accessibility checking tools, conformance,
municipal websites | |||
| Realistic Simulation of Environmental Phenomena -- Snow Fall and Accumulation | | BIBAK | PDF | 29-36 | |
| Sandra Al-Assaf; Dorian Gorgan | |||
| One particular case of the intersection between the photorealistic
presentation and the dynamics of 3D scene of objects is snow in nature, which
presents behavioral aspects of the environment such as accumulation, particle
movement, and redistribution, with the added time element that allows change
and progress analysis. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon, little to no
attention has been given to the realism of the interaction, the attention being
channeled only on the visual aspects of it. The focus of this paper is to
analyze different approaches of representing snow fall and accumulation effects
in real time in such a digital ensemble in order to add a layer of realism and
accurately reflect natural processes. The emphasis is put on the actual
manifestations that take place in nature and the micro physics that pertain to
the processes. Comparisons are made between different existing approaches to
snow accumulation and a new particle hierarchy is imposed to suit both the
technological requirements and to maintain the realism of scenes. Keywords: Photorealistic Presentation; Environmental Phenomena; Snowing Phenomenon;
Snow Fall; Snow Accumulation | |||
| Gamepad Vibration Methods to Help Blind People Perceive Colors | | BIBAK | PDF | 37-40 | |
| Vlad Trifanica; Alexandru Butean; Alin Moldoveanu | |||
| Visually impaired people, completely or partially blind cannot perceive the
surrounding environment as normal healthy people can. Not knowing how colors
and shapes look like is a serious penalty and they have to live with it an
entire life. It is known that the human brain adapts and compensates with
greater capabilities for hearing and touch when vision is low or missing, that
is why blind people develop special skills and perform so good when it comes to
music and kinetotherapy. Based on this information we are proposing a method
that explains colors using vibration s. In this paper we would like to present
a new way of transforming an image to vibration by using the capabilities of an
Xbox gamepad. During the study on real blind volunteers, this kind of approach
proved to be very effective and promising, allowing them to slightly understand
how an image, painting or friend loo ks like. Keywords: Vibration; colors, modern devices; visually impaired | |||
| Analyzing Computer Game Strategies through Visual Techniques | | BIBAK | PDF | 41-48 | |
| Mircea Catalin Catana; Dorian Gorgan | |||
| The paper presents and analyzes an application that can emulate different
types of strategy games and provide significant specifications as to how the
strategy impacts the outcome of the player experience. This application is
meant to be used as a tool both by game developers, which can use it to
calibrate their products and also by the game players, who will want to use it
as a means to improve their strategies. The research explores the concept of
strategy in games and tri es to define a metric for evaluating this concept.
Due to the complexity of videogames, the computation of every outcome for every
possible decision a player can make is impossible, so the research proposes a
method of combining the human familiarity with the game concept and the
processing power of the computer to search the wide solution space. The paper
analyses a concrete example by building a test bed for the tower defense type
games. Keywords: Game Strategy; Visual Analytics; Visual Techniques; Tower Defense Games | |||
| Developing a Navigational 3D Audio Game with Hierarchical Levels of Difficulty for the Visually Impaired Players | | BIBAK | PDF | 49-54 | |
| Oana Balan; Alin Moldoveanu; Florica Moldoveanu; Alexandru Butean | |||
| The Binaural Navigation Game is a 3D audio game with hierarchical levels of
difficulty that can be used by both normal sighted or visually impaired
players. The purpose of the game is to test and train the sound localization
skills, to entertain and to provide an alternative to the common video games
available on the market nowadays. The sonification technique is based on the
perception of 3D binaural sounds synthesized with non-individualized Head
Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) and on the inversely proportional sound
intensity encoding of distance. Furthermore, we use an original method based on
the simultaneous perception of two types of noise that aims to reduce the
incidence of front-back confusions. This game has been tested in an
experimental procedure (comprised of a pre-test, a haptic-auditory feedback
based training and a post-test session) in which 10 visually impaired subjects
(with a percent of residual vision ranging from 0% to 15%) have participated.
This paper aims to present the design and development of the Binaural
Navigation Game, the Game Editor (an application that allows the experimenter
to set the layout of new sets of levels) and the Binaural Game Analyzer, a tool
used to visualize and evaluate the players' performances. Keywords: 3D sound; HRTF; audio game; navigation skills; orientation and mobility
skills | |||
| Text Generation Starting From an Ontology | | BIBAK | PDF | 55-60 | |
| Dragos Alexandru Cojocaru; Stefan Trausan-Matu | |||
| The subject of this paper is the development of an application which
generates natural language text, starting from an OWL ontology. The Natural
Language Generation, in the context of Semantic Web, represents a relatively
new field of research, but due to the capabilities of the ontologies (central
element of the Semantic Web) of being dynamically modified and completed with
new information, the theme of the application is of great importance. The
project employs Rhetorical Structure Theory to structure hierarchically the
ontological content, resulting in a human-like discourse structure. Since the
Semantic Web is continuously adding machine-readable content, the user can take
advantage of this impressive database of knowledge transformed into coherent
texts for human with the aid of our application. Keywords: Semantic Web; ontology; Rhetorical Structure Theory; natural language
generation | |||
| A Design Framework for Foreign Language Learning Applications | | BIBAK | PDF | 61-66 | |
| Mihaela Colhon | |||
| In this article we present a method for generating and applying syntactic
motivated patterns in order to develop a foreign language learning mechanism.
The patterns have been extracted from a parallel corpus that has been
automatically annotated for morpho-syntactic descriptions and syntactic
constituents. The proposed language learning framework is not designed around
the well-known list of words. Using this application, the user does not
necessarily practice the foreign language lexicon, which is supposed to be
known at a medium level. Instead, with this application, the user is guided to
learn the so-called "translation knowledge". Keywords: Machine Translation, Learning Schema, Human-Computer Interaction | |||
| Opinion Summarization for Hotel Reviews | | BIBAK | PDF | 67-74 | |
| Bogdan Cristian Marchis; Alexandru Tifrea; Mihai-Cristian Volmer; Traian Rebedea | |||
| This paper presents a new approach for finding the best n-grams that
efficiently summarize a large set of reviews. The proposed unsupervised method
uses a readability score and a representativeness score to select those n-grams
that best convey the main opinions contained in the processed reviews. In order
to further refine the selected n-grams, we use sentiment analysis and part of
speech (POS) tagging to impose certain requirements that the n-grams that we
are looking for should meet. Furthermore, the best n-grams were classified into
several topics, which allowed a better prevent ion of redundancy among the
summarizing n-grams. Therefore we offer an unsupervised, mostly non-aspect
based, unstructured opinion summarization algorithm that can be easily
implemented for any web platform that accepts reviews, due to its genericity.
In order to assess the results of our algorithm, we summarized hotel reviews
extracted for the TripAdvisor 1 website. The algorithm produces readable
results that convey relevant opinions about the hotels that we used for
testing. Keywords: Opinion summarization, opinion mining, natural language processing, n-grams,
micropinions | |||
| Automated Paper Annotation with ReaderBench | | BIBAK | PDF | 75-80 | |
| Ionut Cristian Paraschiv; Mihai Dascalu; Stefan Trausan-Matu; Philippe Dessus | |||
| The annotation of articles from a given domain and the generation of
semantic metadata can be considered a reliable foundation for creating a paper
recommender system. Within this paper, the models from other previous
researches are extended with the capability of visualizing articles and the
most important concepts from a domain with in imposed timeframes. This can be
very useful for researchers to check out the most important publications from a
given period, to view which are the trends and how a domain has evolved. Our
previous analyses used the articles to build a paper graph and to suggest the
most relevant articles, given a user defined query in natural language. This
research contains a use case and creates visual graph representations to
enhance the overall perception of the evolution of a domain. Keywords: Scientometrics; paper recommendation system; time analysis; discourse
analysis; semantic similarity | |||
| Conversational Agent that Models a Historical Personality | | BIBAK | PDF | 81-86 | |
| Adrian Bogatu; Dorin Rotarescu; Traian Rebedea; Stefan Ruseti | |||
| In this paper we discuss the current approaches in question answering (QA)
and their applicability in building a conversational agent that models a
historical figure that gives informative and relevant answers to user questions
about the life of that personality. We analyze two main methods: one in which
we use an ontology to build our knowledge base and one where we don't have a
knowledge base and we solve the answer sentence selection problem for question
answering. We observed that the first method is better for answering more
general questions and the second method can deal with more specific and complex
lexically and syntactically questions. The implementation of the conversational
agent relies on the two combined approaches, the second being a fallback option
if the first method is not able to provide an answer. Keywords: Conversational agent; natural language processing; information retrieval;
question answering; ontologies; answer sentence selection | |||
| Disruptive Technologies -- UV Protect -- Smart Watch Application | | BIBAK | PDF | 87-90 | |
| Andrei-Bogdan Baran; Adrian Iftene | |||
| Health care industry is one of the most interesting domains where we can
bring innovative and smart technologies that can have a big positive impact on
our health. These days people are starting to be more and more concerned about
their health and they are interested in having small wearable devices that
allow them to be able to get real time data through different sensors regarding
the environment or different activities they a re involved in. In this paper we
will show how new disruptive technologies can be used to monitored the level of
the ultraviolet radiation and then how the user can be notified about that. Keywords: Disruptive Technologies; Smart Watch; Samsung Gear S; Ultraviolet Radiation | |||
| Introducing Basic Geometric Shapes to Visually Impaired People Using a Mobile App | | BIBAK | PDF | 91-94 | |
| Bogdan Troanca; Alexandru Butean; Alin Moldoveanu; Oana Balan | |||
| The problem of blindness and other eye disabilities is highly important as
it affects millions of people on the globe. In the same time, the number of
modern touchscreen devices is increasing fast. They are widely spread and
becoming accessible for education purposes. For those who suffer from
congenital visual disabilities is very difficult to imagine the world as it is
and the struggle begins from the early school stages and continues for the rest
of their lives. Modern touchscreen devices, also called smart devices,
represent a viable solution for people with sight problems due to their rich
multimedia experience. Thus, they can be used as assistive devices. This paper
describes how learning basic geometric shapes using a smartphone or a tablet
can improve several important aspects like: general feeling of using
touchscreen devices, perception of a basic figure's shape by simply touching
the screen, intuition on how to follow a GPS map. This methodology represents
only the initial stage from a long-term learning process that aims to help
visually impaired people to understand and use the power of smart devices in
order to perceive the world around them as normal people do. Keywords: Sound; vibration; mobile devices; visually impaired | |||
| Indoor Localization and Navigation Using Phone Sensors and a 3D Model of the Building | | BIBAK | PDF | 95-100 | |
| Szabolcs Orban; Teodor Stefanut | |||
| This article presents an innovative approach in offering indoor navigation
assistance based on mobile device sensors and a 3D model of the building. We
will discuss the three main stages that are required in order to implement the
proposed solution: (1) creation of the 3D model, (2) definition of the
navigation attributes (built to also support localization) and (3)
implementation of all the required functionalities in an Android application.
One of our main concerns is related to the identification of the current
location of the user in an indoor environment efficiently using the device's
sensors. For this purpose we will describe an algorithm that relies on the
accelerometer and the compass to provide accurate location information and to
simulate the movement of the user into the environment, without consuming too
much energy. Keywords: indoor localization, mobile device sensors, indoor navigation, virtual
representation | |||
| An Approach for Detecting ID Frauds in a Traditional Voting System Using a Smartphone Stand | | BIBAK | PDF | 101-104 | |
| Paul Strimbeanu; Alexandru Butean; Diana Butean; Florica Moldoveanu | |||
| All over the world, the voting systems are very important tools that
contribute to the basic principles of democracy and equality. In every
developing country, the problem of online voting becomes a necessity, therefore
solutions must be found. Nowadays mobile smart devices are equipped with high
performance lens and cameras, therefore they can capture high quality pictures
in almost no time. Optical character recognition methods (OCR) are getting 99%
accuracy on standard font documents with little or no noise at all. Having this
in mind we propose a system that verifies in real-time the ID of an elector,
right before a traditional voting system procedure. This solution is based on a
stand containing a mobile device that takes a quality picture of that ID and
sends it to a server to extract the data. The use of such a system does not
affect the actual voting process and does not interfere or relate with the
voter's choice at all. Keywords: Mobile devices, E-government; voting system | |||
| Socialization Techniques in Virtual 3D Space | | BIBAK | PDF | 105-110 | |
| George Marian Hotca; Teodor Stefanut; Dorian Gorgan | |||
| This paper presents the LivingRoom platform for online socialization within
the 3D virtual space. The user is represented by an avatar that is moving
around the virtual space and can communicate with other avatars. The audio and
video communication among avatars is triggered by their interactions similarly
with the human action within the real world. Keywords: Virtual Space; Visual Techniques; User Interaction Techniques; Audio
Communication; Video Communication; Avatar | |||
| Gestural Recognition by a Four-Kinect Module in a CAVE "Le SAS" | | BIBAK | PDF | 111-114 | |
| Saleh Salous; Julien Newton; Laure Leroy; Safwan Chendeb | |||
| Among the various types of interactions in a virtual reality (VR) room,
physical gestures such as moving one's hands are one of the ways to communicate
with the virtual environment. It is possible to capture those gestures with
sensors, in our case the Microsoft Kinect. In the context of a large CAVE, not
one but four Kinects are used to track the user and capture its gestures.
However, the question of the detect ion of specific gestures by this system
comes into play as the CAVE requires recognizing the user's gestures in order
to interpret them into an input. In this paper we focus on the gestural
recognition ability of our CAVE applied to three specific gestures: Raising the
right hand, raising the left hand and short hopping. Moreover, we provide
experimental results showing that a Four-Kinect system provides more effective
gesture recognition than a single sensor. Keywords: Multi-Kinect; gestural interaction; gesture recognition; virtual reality;
CAVE | |||
| Real Time Visualization of Crowd Dynamics Scenarios | | BIBAK | PDF | 121-128 | |
| Dan Razvan Ilies; Adrian Sabou; Dorian Gorgan | |||
| This paper presents an approach to real-time simulation of crowd dynamics on
GPU enabled computing architectures. We discuss challenges with parallelization
of agent-based models, implementing parallel simulation algorithms,
visualization and interaction with the simulated scene and, most importantly,
ensuring communication and synchronization between all these processes. Our
main objective is to provide interactive simulation of realistic models such as
pedestrian dynamics, in which large crowds move and interact among themselves
and with the environment. Simulation parameters like scene complexity, scene
composition, as well as the number of agents are varied in order to simulate
different scenarios and to assess the impact on performance. Keywords: Visualization; Crowd dynamics; Interactive simulation; Social forces; Social
models; Graphics Processing Unit | |||
| Real-time Video Processing in Web Applications | | BIBAK | PDF | 129-132 | |
| Cristian Ionita; Alexandru Barbulescu | |||
| The OpenGL ES standard is implemented in modern desktop and mobile browsers
through the WebGL API. This paper explores the potential for using OpenGL ES
hardware acceleration for real time video processing in standard HTML5
applications. We analyze the WebGL performance across device types and compare
it with the standard JavaScript and canvas performance. Keywords: WebGL; GLSL; OpenGL ES; kernel; convolution matrix; JavaScript | |||
| Diversifying Search Results Using Semantic Resources | | BIBAK | PDF | 133-136 | |
| Cristian Neamtu; Adrian Iftene | |||
| In the last years, multimedia content has grown increasingly over the
Internet, especially in social networks (like Facebook or Flickr), where users
often post images using their mobile devices. In these networks, the content is
later used in search operations, when some users want to find something using a
specific query. Nowadays, searching into these networks is primarily made using
the title, description and the keywords associated to resources added by users
that have posted the content. In this paper we address the problem of query
ambiguity. The usage of semantic resources, like ConceptNet and DBpedia
ontologies, has been proven to retrieve a better set of results. Keywords: Image Retrieval; Search Diversification; Semantic Resources; ConceptNet;
DBpedia | |||
| Motives and Characteristics of Facebook Use by Students from a Romanian University | | BIBAK | PDF | 137-140 | |
| Alexandru Balog; Costin Pribeanu; Ion Ivan | |||
| The increasing popularity of Facebook among university students is raising
several research questions regarding the characteristics of use. In the context
of modern school, the academic use and the usage related to the university
context are of special interest. This paper aims at analyzing the motives for
the use of Facebook and the characteristics of Facebook use by students from a
Romanian university. The results show that the motives of using Facebook are
mainly related to communicating with friends, to find out what happens in their
university and to keep in touch with former high school colleagues. The results
revealed significant differences between male and female students in terms of
motives of using, network size, frequency and duration of use. Female students
have more Facebook friends and spend more time on Facebook than male students.
Moreover, significant differences exist between undergraduate and master
students. Keywords: Facebook, social networks, educational use of Facebook, motives of using
Facebook | |||
| Movies Classification | | BIBAK | PDF | 141-144 | |
| Daniel Gavril; Adrian Iftene | |||
| Every device that is released nowadays has the capability to display videos.
From small devices like smart phones to bigger ones likes desktops or smart
TVs, movies are available at any time. Therefore, getting important, fast and
reliable data about movies at any time and everywhere is very important when it
comes to money. Computer users like to get live experiences based on their
interests, searches or their personal profile and their needs include movies.
When people gather to someone's place or a family unites on holidays, finding a
good movie to watch for that moment becomes hard. There are different tastes in
movies, persons that like drama more than science-fiction or some that will
enjoy movies based on the director of that movie or important actors. Using a
good search engine that might understand users desires based on recent searches
or interests might come in handy. Movies Classification application runs on
Windows operating systems and tries to understand user perspective when he
tries to find a movie that might suit his tastes. The app updates live the
suggested movies based on the customizable profile that every registered user
must set. Keywords: Movies Classification; Client-Server Architecture; User Profiling | |||
| A Software Component for Polyglot Text-to-Speech Synthesis: User Interface and Beta Testing Results | | BIBAK | PDF | 145-148 | |
| Paul Fogarassy-Neszly; Zlatomir Zinveliu; Costin Pribeanu | |||
| Text-to-speech synthesis has many applications in the area of assistive
technologies for visually impaired people. Some applications require
multilingual text-to-speech synthesis. In this case, multilingual text analysis
and voice switching are desirable. In this paper an improved functional version
(beta) of a software component for polyglot text-to-speech synthesis is
presented. Beta testing results are useful to reveal the optimal level of
parameters and suggest new directions to improve the method and algorithms.
Testing results show that the new version of the component is able to
automatically detect the language with a reasonable accuracy from texts with a
variable degree of fragmentation. Keywords: Multilingual speech synthesis, language recognition, text-to-speech
synthesis, assistive technologies beta testing, usability, accessibility | |||