Peer2Peer im Quartier
FX – Future eXperience
Urban Pioneers Community
Reflex
Optimum
Sim4Blocks
VR-Planning
Smart City Demo Aspern
HiT
Peacox
EdgeBraille
FACTS
FacetClouds
Moving
PEEM
C2G
PICOS
LookAt
WalkOnWeb
OmniPaper
Peacox
2011 – 2015
Project Number: FP7-288466 (FP7-ICT)
In modern times increased mobility results in a strong environmental impact, particularly in urban areas. Personal transportation is one of the greatest contributors to CO2 emissions. Means to help people reduce their ecological impact are urgently needed. In response to this need, PEACOX provides travelers with a personalized multi-modal navigation tool that enables, helps and persuades users to travel in an environmentally conscious way. To convince users to make more sustainable travel choices PEACOX will enrich navigation systems with innovative approaches and features, such as an automated travel mode and a trip purpose detection, feedback on CO2 consumption, and persuasive interface strategies.
The system will be developed in two iterations following user-centered and agile design approaches. Extensive field trials in Vienna and Dublin will ensure high quality and impact of the developed system. The PEACOX consortium unites expertise in navigation systems, transportation sciences, environmental modeling, artificial intelligence, persuasive technology, human-computer interaction, and software development.
Project Partners:
– CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Coordinator, Austria)
– FLUIDTIME Data Services GmbH (Austria)
– TMX – Telematix Software a.s. (Czech Republic)
– ETHZ – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Switzerland)
– TCD – Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)
– ICCS – National Technical University of Athens (Greece)
– ITS – ITS Vienna Region (Austria)
– TOMTOM INTERNATIONAL BV (The Netherlands)
http://www.project-peacox.eu/home/
EdgeBraille
EdgeBraille addresses the issue of tailored text input methods for visually impaired and blind users that are needed on touchscreen devices to support their accessibility. Previous approaches still have issues related to the necessity of searching for characters, slow entry speeds or cumbersome handling.
EdgeBraille is a new Braille-based text input method, which allows entering six-point Braille characters by swiping one finger along the edges of the touchscreen in an arbitrary sequence. Overall EdgeBraille was perceived well by the users and possesses favorable handling characteristics. In terms of user performance (words per minute and error rate we found no significant differences in comparison to other common braille-based input methods. Based on evaluation results and feedback of users we identified possibilities for improvement in terms of a smaller EdgeBraille version allowing the entry of eight-point Braille characters.
FACTS
2011 – 2015
Project Number: 832045 (ffg)
The Austrian research studio FACTS performs applied research and development with the purpose to achieve an international winning margin by completely innovative human factors technologies and services. Under consideration of the global miniaturization trend, FACTS identifies its objectives with the development of wearable measuring systems that are capable to unobtrusively extract, quantify, visualise and automatically interpret critical human factors. FACTS concentrates its resources on an innovative multipurpose platform for eye tracking combined with wearable multi-sensory information processing for the quantitative estimation of orientation, viewpoint and behaviour in relation to the product and the user interaction. Advanced wearable – inertial, textile and physiological – sensor technologies will be combined or separately applied with visual information, with the purpose to track and analyse client attention behaviour. FACTS develops novel eye tracking systems that are innovated through (i) AI enabled – cognitive – video analyses for automated classification of huge data and (ii) the combination of multi-sensory positioning and behaviour sensing will enable innovative geo- referenced representations of human factors.
FacetClouds
Tag clouds are simple yet very widespread representations of how often certain words appear in a collection. In conventional tag clouds, only a single visual text variable is actively controlled: the tags’ font size. Previous work has demonstrated that font size is indeed the most influential visual text variable. However, there are other variables, such as text color, font style and tag orientation, that could be manipulated to encode additional data dimensions.
FacetClouds manipulate intrinsic visual text variables to encode multiple data dimensions within a single tag cloud. We conducted a series of experiments to detect the most appropriate visual text variables for encoding nominal and ordinal values in a cloud with tags of varying font size.
Moving
2012 – 2014
Project Number: 835733 (bmvit, ways2go)
How do people interact with their surrounding environment? How do new media and information sources influence orientation and navigation behavior? These are the kinds of questions addressed by MOVING. The project aims at developing a method for the evaluation of guiding systems and navigation solutions in public infrastructures, with particular attention to persons unaccustomed to the infrastructure.
To understand people’s navigation behavior in public spaces and to identify gaps and problems in current guiding systems, MOVING combines a virtual environment (DAVE) as well as eye-tracking technology with simulation models of pedestrian behavior.
Within the project, CURE investigates individuals’ information perception and visual attention allocation in large public spaces. A newly developed attention model serves as basis to analyze way finding strategies in unknown environments. As an expert in evaluating the usability of mobile and guiding systems, CURE contributes to effective navigation systems in public spaces.
Project Partners:
– AIT – Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
– Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH
– is-design GmbH
– NOUS Wissensmanagement GmbH
– Architekt DI Alfred Ritter
– ÖBB Infrastruktur AG
PEEM
2010 – 2012
Project Number: 825501 (klima energie fonds, Neue Energien)
The PEEM project carried out research on new strategies and tools providing energy related feedback to the costumer in a persuasive and unobtrusive way in the home context. CURE aimed to detect, if those tools have the potential to reduce energy consumption without loss of comfort for the users. Tailored persuasive approaches overcoming limitations of existing solutions were developed, prototyped and experimentally validated in realistic long-term settings.
CURE contributed to the project in the field of human-computer interaction in defining requirements for the prototype. Furthermore CURE’s goal was to develop persuasive ambient strategies for energy efficiency. Those strategies were applied in a persuasive home display, where CURE was also included in the designing process. CURE evaluated the developed prototype by designing and preparing a three month experiment.
Project Partners:
– CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Coordinator)
– ICT&S Center, University of Salzburg
– Salzburg AG
C2G
2010 – 2012
Project Number: 825551 (klima energie fonds, Neue Energien)
C2G dealt with energy-feedback in households with the focus on the consumer. Within this project we dealt with the question how information about potential energy savings is best presented to the consumer in order to reduce energy consumption in a smart-grid. Additionally we were interested how, when and what kind of energy feedback residents need considering socio-demographic and cultural backgrounds. Therefore we developed energy-feedback strategies and tools and finally compared them in a one-year field trial. The aim was to detect the most resource effective energy feedback methods for the human-in-the-loop in smart grid environments.
Within C2G CURE’s role included framing human-centered requirements for energy-feedback tools, interaction and communication design for the tools and trial design as well as preparation, realization and analyzing the collected data. CURE’s main aim was to invent persuasive tools for a sustainable high living standard.
Project Partners:
– Salzburg AG (Coordinator)
– CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering
– Salzburg Wohnbau GmbH
– Technische Universität Wien – Institut für Computertechnologie (ICT)
– AIT – Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
PICOS
2008 – 2011
Project Number: FP7-215056
PICOS addressed the issue of trust, privacy and identity management of community services and applications on the internet and in mobile communication networks. The main focus of this project was placed upon community-supporting services and complex distributed service architectures. As a result, a state-of-the-art platform created interoperable, open, privacy-respecting identity and trust management tools that were used to construct community application prototypes by leading industry partners. Those were then evaluated by selected on-line communities for their usability, ergonomics, legal issues, trust and privacy.
In this project CURE was working on the identification of the key user groups and communities and analyzed the different attributes and
functions necessary to establish trust, identity and privacy in on-line interactions. CURE closely collaborated with end-users and
developed a comprehensive trial and assessment outline plan to determine the criteria for assessing the developed technology.
Project Partners:
– Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität (Coordinator, Germany)
– CURE – Center for Usability Research & Engineering (Austria)
– Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Bristol (United Kingdom)
– Hewlett-Packard Centre de Competence France (France)
– Universidad de Málaga (Spain)
– Katholike Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
– IT-Objects GmbH (Germany)
– Atos Origin (Spain)
– T-Mobile International (Germany)
– Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (Germany)
– Brno University (Czech Republic)
LookAt
2008 – 2010
Project Number: 815462
A key issue in Human-Computer Interfaces is to model the situated awareness of the user and to estimate the semantic information captured from the immediate environment. Determining the human focus of attention is crucial by pointing to the information of interest, associating user activity to a spatial and task based context. The objective of LookAt was to develop towards a computational model of human attention from credible data that was received directly from human selective capture of multi-sensory information. Basic research focused on the outline of a novel framework on extraction of the focus of attention by (i) determining the exact viewing direction and (ii) capturing the semantic content of pedestrians while performing their task in urban environment scenarios. Two pilot studies towards the implementation of application specific prototypes were performed using mobile eye trackers that extract human awareness about the urban environment. Semantic mapping was achieved from the developed technologies of automated object detection and recognition from eye gaze on video, and by mobile sensing about user location and head direction for content selection from georeferenced map features.
WalkOnWeb
2004 – 2007
Project Number: IST-004688
WalkOnWeb supported hikers by providing an integrated platform including hiking information on paths, landmarks, weather, etc.. The platform was not only based on a “desktop web solution” but also integrated other channels like maps on paper, PDAs and mobile phones. Both GEO-ontologies as well as GPS services were crucial pillars of the final prototype. GEO-ontologies enabled hikers to search for hiking paths by the paths’ characteristics, which are derived from electronical maps.
CURE analyzed the needs of the various subgroups of hikers. These groups included families, hikers looking for adventures, elderly hikers, hikers with cultural interests, etc. Based on these finding user requirements were deduced. CURE was also responsible for the conceptual design of the various user interfaces. Tests in the field – also conducted by CURE – evaluated the project’s outcomes.
OmniPaper
2002 – 2004
Project Number: IST-32174
OmniPaper investigated methods for drastically enhancing multilingual access to distributed information resources in a self-learning environment. The OmniPaper prototype enabled users to search for and navigate through online news originating from a large number of digital European newspapers.
Johann Schrammel 