Stefanidi, E., Korozi, M., Leonidis, A., Doulgeraki, M., & Antona, M. (2018) Educator-Oriented Tools for Managing the Attention-Aware Intelligent Classroom In the Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning (eLmL 2018), Rome, Italy, 25-29 March 2018 (pp. 72-77). IARIA.

Abstract

The emergence of Intelligent Classrooms and in particular classrooms that are equipped with appropriate infrastructure for identifying the students’ attention levels, has raised the need for appropriate educator-friendly tools that facilitate monitoring and management of these educational environments. This paper presents two such systems: LECTORviewer and NotifEye. LECTORviewer is deployed on the educator’s personal workstation and offers an overview of the students’ attention levels. Additionally, through its intuitive user interface, educators can provide their input regarding ambiguous behaviors or scheduled interventions that aim to reengage distracted, tired or unmotivated students to the educational process. NotifEye is a smart watch application for educators that aims to communicate, in a mobile fashion, important events occurring during a lesson (e.g., 60% of students are tired). This work presents the functionality of these tools and the usability findings of a heuristic evaluation experiment conducted with UX experts for LECTORviewer.

Margetis, G. Ntoa, S., Antona, M., Stephanidis, C. (2017) Interacting with augmented paper maps: a user experience study 12th biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter (CHITALY 2017). 18th -20th September, Cagliari, Italy.

DOI: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3125584

Abstract

This paper presents a user experience study of interaction with printed maps for providing digitally augmented tourism information. The Interactive Maps system has been implemented based on an interactive printed matter framework which provides all the necessary components for developing smart applications that offer printed matter interaction, and has been deployed and evaluated in the context of the publicly available Tourism InfoPoint of the Municipality of Heraklion. The results of the evaluation highlight that interacting with digitally augmented paper is quite easy and natural, while the overall user experience is positive.

Korozi, M., Leonidis, A., Antona, M., & Stephanidis, C. (2017) LECTOR: towards reengaging students in the educational process inside smart classrooms In International Conference on Intelligent Human Computer Interaction (pp. 137-149). Springer, Cham.

DOI: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-72038-8_11

Abstract

This paper presents LECTOR, a system that helps educators in understanding when students have stopped paying attention to the educational process and assists them in reengaging the students to the current learning activity. LECTOR aims to take advantage of the ambient facilities that “smart classrooms” have to offer by (i) enabling educators to employ their preferred attention monitoring strategies (including any well-established activity recognition techniques) in order to identify inattentive behaviors and (ii) recommending interventions for motivating distracted students when deemed necessary. Furthermore, LECTOR offers an educator friendly design studio that enables teachers to create or modify the rules that trigger “inattention alarms”, as well as tailor the intervention mechanism to the needs of their course by modifying the respective rules. This paper presents the rationale behind the design of LECTOR and outlines its key features and facilities.

Korozi, M., Antona, M., Ntagianta, A., Leonidis, A., & Stephanidis, C. (2017) LECTORstudio: creating inattention alarms and interventions to reengage the students in the educational process In Proceedings of the 10th Annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation.

DOI: https://library.iated.org/view/KOROZI2017LEC

Abstract

It is almost inevitable that during a course, students will get distracted either by internal or external stimuli. Introducing engaging activities into the main lecture and changing pedagogies within a class period has remarkable effects on students' concentration levels. This paper presents LECTORstudio, an authoring tool that enables educators to build the logic that guides the decision-making mechanisms of LECTOR, a framework capable of identifying inattentive behaviors and intervening to re-engage students to the educational process. LECTORstudio offers three simple and intuitive wizards that aim to guide educators through the sophisticated processes of (i) defining rules that signify inattention and (ii) describing the intervention strategies that should be applied under various educational circumstances. This work presents the functionality of the tool and the usability findings of a heuristic evaluation experiment conducted with UX experts.

P. Koutlemanis, X. Zabulis (2017) Tracking of multiple planar projection boards for interactive mixed-reality applications in Multimedia Tools and Applications, 1-31, Oct, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-5313-6

Abstract

The case of mixed-reality projector-camera systems is considered and, in particular, those which employ hand-held boards as interactive displays. This work focuses upon the accurate, robust, and timely detection and pose estimation of such boards, to achieve high-quality augmentation and interaction. The proposed approach operates a camera in the near infrared spectrum to filter out the optical projection from the sensory input. However, the monochromaticity of input restricts the use of color for the detection of boards. In this context, two methods are proposed. The first regards the pose estimation of boards which, being computationally demanding and frequently used by the system, is highly parallelized. The second uses this pose estimation method to detect and track boards, being efficient in the use of computational resources so that accurate results are provided in real-time. Accurate pose estimation facilitates touch detection upon designated areas on the boards and high-quality projection of visual content upon boards. An implementation of the proposed approach is extensively and quantitatively evaluated, as to its accuracy and efficiency. This evaluation, along with usability and pilot application investigations, indicate the suitability of the proposed approach for use in interactive, mixed-reality applications.

Ioannidi, D., Zidianakis, E., Antona, M., & Stephanidis, C. (2016) Designing Games for Children with developmental disabilities in Ambient Intelligence Environments International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction.

DOI: https://goo.gl/MzM5x6

Zidianakis, E., Stratigi, K., Ioannidi, D., Partarakis, N., Antona, M., & Stephanidis, C. (2016) The farm game: A game designed to follow children’s playing maturity In the Proceedings of the 5th EAI International Conference: ArtsIT, Interactivity & Game Creation (ArtsIT 2016), Esbjerg, Denmark, 2-3 May.

DOI: https://goo.gl/Bpj3WA

Margetis, G., Antona, M., & Stephanidis, C. (2015) A Framework for Supporting Natural Interaction with Printed Matter in Ambient Intelligence Environments In the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Ambient Computing, Applications, Services and Technologies (AMBIENT 2015), Nice, France, 19-24 July (pp. 72-78). USA: IARIA XPS Press.

DOI: https://goo.gl/ysPHFm

Ntoa, S., Leonidis, A., Korozi, M., Papadaki, E., Margetis, G., Antona, M., & Stephanidis, C. (2015) Analysis and Design of Three Multimodal Interactive Systems to Support the Everyday Needs of Children with Cognitive Impairments In M. Antona & C. Stephanidis (Eds.), Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Access to Learning, Health and Well-Being – Volume 9 of the combined Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2015), Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2-7 August, pp. 637-648. Berlin Heidelberg: Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series of Springer

DOI: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20684-4_61

Abstract

The autonomy and independence of users with cognitive impairments can be fostered through cognitive technologies. The use of traditional computer interfaces has however proved to be difficult for these users. This paper proposes three innovative systems to train children with cognitive impairments in three fundamental everyday life activities: (a) familiarizing with the home environments, its objects and activities; (b) learning about money and practicing shopping skills; and (c) learning how to prepare and cook simple meals. All three systems feature multimodal interaction and support multimedia output.

Partarakis, N., Zidianakis, E., Antona, M., & Stephanidis, C. (2015) Art and Coffee in the Museum In N. Streitz & P. Markopoulos (Eds.), Distributed, Ambient, and Pervasive Interactions – Volume 21 of the combined Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2015), Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2-7 August, pp. 370-381. Berlin Heidelberg: Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series of Springer

DOI: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20804-6_34

Abstract

Natural interaction refers to people interacting with technology as they are used to interact with the real world in everyday life, through gestures, expressions, movements, etc., and discovering the world by looking around and manipulating physical objects [16]. In the domain of cultural heritage research has been conducted in a number of directions including (a) Personalised Information in Museums, (b) Interactive Exhibits, (c) Interactive Games Installations in Museums, (d) Museum Mobile Applications, (e) Museums presence on the Web and (f) Museum Social Applications. Most museums target family groups and organize family-oriented events in their programs but how families choose to visit particular museums in response to their leisure needs has rarely been highlighted. This work exploits the possibility of extending the usage of AmI technology, and thus the user experience, within leisure spaces provided by museums such as cafeterias. The Museum Coffee Table is an augmented physical surface where physical objects can be used for accessing information about artists and their creations. At the same entertainment for children is facilitated through the integration of popular games on the surface. As a result, the entire family can seat around the table, drink coffee and complete their visit to the museum acquiring additional knowledge and playing games.