SurfNet
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NSERC SurfNet is a Canadian alliance of academic researchers, industry partners and government collaborators. The goal of SurfNet is to improve the development, performance, and usability of software applications for surface computing environments of digital display surfaces, such as multi-touch screens, tabletops, wall-sized displays and hand-held devices. We develop innovative collaboration techniques for digital display surfaces to encourage interaction with data in a productive and creative way.
SurfNet’s vision is to integrate innovative research in two critical areas – software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI) – to identify critical requirements, design new engineering processes, and build new tools for surface-based application development.
SurfNet’s fundamental research is clustered into three research themes and four application areas.
RESEARCH THEMES:
APPLICATION AREAS:
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Item Metadata only 3D Tabletop Display Interaction(2010) Hancock, MarkItem Metadata only Item Metadata only ActiveStory Enhanced: Low-Fidelity Prototyping and Wizard of Oz Usability Testing Tool(Springer, 2009) Hosseini-Khayat, Ali; Ghanam, Yaser; Park, Shelly; Maurer, FrankThis paper presents “ActiveStory Enhanced” as a tool that enables prototyping user interfaces and conducting usability tests in a way that is aligned with agile principles. The tool allows designers to sketch user interface prototypes as well as add basic interactions to provide navigation. Sketching can be done using a mouse or stylus on tablet PCs. Designers can then export the prototype to a web-based Wizard of Oz testing tool, allowing test participants to remotely walk through a UI while recording metrics such as mouse movements and time spent on pages. ASE improves on the original by providing some usability improvements, improved browser support, undo support, more control over the design and an improved pen and paper metaphor.Item Metadata only The Acute Cognitive Benefits of Casual Exergame Play(ACM, 2012) Gao, Y.; Mandryk, R. L.Acute cognitive benefits, such as temporary improvements in concentration, can result from as few as ten minutes of exercise; however, most people do not take exercise breaks throughout the day. To motivate people to receive the cognitive benefits of exercising in short bursts multiple times per day, we designed an engaging casual exergame. To determine whether there are cognitive benefits after playing our game, we conducted two studies to compare playing ten minutes of our casual exergame to a sedentary version of the game or exercise on a treadmill. We found acute cognitive benefits of the casual exergame over the sedentary version (but not treadmill exercise), demonstrated by significantly improved performance on two cognitive tests that require focus and concentration. Significant improvements were also found in participants' affective states after playing the casual exergame. Finally, our casual exergame produces similar exertion levels to treadmill exercise, but is perceived as more fun.Item Metadata only Adapting Existing Applications to Support New Interaction Technologies: Technical and Usability Issues(ACM, 2010) Andreychuk, Darren; Ghanam, Yaser; Maurer, FrankEngineering interactive systems for use on emerging technologies such as touch-enabled devices and horizontal displays is not straightforward. Firstly, the migration process of a system from an old hardware platform to new multi-touch displays is challenging. Issues pertaining to scaling, orientation, new input mechanisms, novel interaction techniques and different SDKs need to be examined. Secondly, even after we manage to understand and resolve these issues, we need to find effective ways to migrate applications and maintain them. This paper contributes a thorough analysis of the technical and usability issues that need to be considered when migrating systems to different touch-enabled technologies including vertical and horizontal displays.Item Metadata only Adaptive forward error correction for real-time groupware(ACM, 2012) Dyck, Jeff; Gutwin, Carl; Makaroff, DwightReal-time distributed groupware sends several kinds of messages with varying quality-of-service requirements. However, standard network protocols do not provide the flexibility needed to support these different requirements (either providing too much reliability or too little), leading to poor performance on real-world networks. To address this problem, we investigated the use of an application-level networking technique called adaptive forward error correction (AFEC) for real-time groupware. AFEC can maintain a predefined level of reliability while avoiding the overhead of packet acknowledgement or retransmission. We analysed the requirements of typical real-time groupware systems and developed an AFEC technique to meet these needs. We tested the new technique in an experiment that measured message reliability and latency using TCP, plain UDP, UDP with non-adaptive FEC, and UDP with our AFEC scheme, under several simulated network conditions. Our results show that for awareness messages that can tolerate some loss, FEC approaches keep latency at nearly the plain-UDP level while dramatically improving reliability. In addition, adaptive FEC is the only technique that can maintain a specified level of reliability and also minimize delay as network conditions change. Our study shows that groupware AFEC can be a useful tool for improving the real-world performance and usability of real-time groupware.Item Metadata only Agile Interaction Design and Test-Driven Development of User Interfaces – A Literature Review(Springer, 2010) Hellmann, Theodore D.; Hosseini-Khayat, Ali; Maurer, FrankThis chapter describes the development of GUI-based applications, from usability engineering and prototyping to acceptance test-driven development, in an agile context. An overview of current agile interaction design practices will be presented, including a thorough analysis of the current role of prototyping and current attempts to facilitate test-driven development of GUI systems, as presented in academic and industrial literature. Traditional usability engineering approaches shows that if user input is taken into consideration early in the development process by repeatedly conducting usability tests on low-fidelity prototypes of the GUI system, the final version of the GUI will be both more usable and less likely to require revision. The major risk associated with test-driven development of GUIs is the high likelihood of change in the target GUI, which can make test development unnecessarily expensive and time consuming. A unification of these styles of development will be presented, along with a prediction of how this process can be used to simplify creating testable GUI-based applications by agile teams.Item Metadata only Item Open Access Agile Planner for Digital Tabletop (APDT)(2010-07-08)APDT is a tool designed for distributed agile planning on digital tabletops. For more information, http://ase.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/index.php?page=agile-plannerItem Metadata only Air pointing: Design and evaluation of spatial target acquisition with and without visual feedback(Elsevier, 2011) Cockburn, A.; Quinn, P.; Gutwin, C.; Ramos, G.; Looser, J.Sensing technologies such as inertia tracking and computer vision enable spatial interactions where users make selections by ‘air pointing’: moving a limb, finger, or device to a specific spatial region. In addition of expanding the vocabulary of possible interactions available, air pointing brings the potential benefit of enabling ‘eyes-free’ interactions, where users rely on proprioception and kinaesthesia rather than vision. This paper explores the design space for air pointing interactions, and presents tangible results in the form of a framework that helps designers understand input dimensions and resulting interaction qualities. The framework provides a set of fundamental concepts that aid in thinking about the air pointing domain, in characterizing and comparing existing solutions, and in evaluating novel techniques. We carry out an initial investigation to demonstrate the concepts of the framework by designing and comparing three air pointing techniques: one based on small angular ‘raycasting’ movements, one on large movements across a 2D plane, and one on movements in a 3D volume. Results show that large movements on the 2D plane are both rapid (selection times under 1 s) and accurate, even without visual feedback. Raycasting is rapid but inaccurate, and the 3D volume is expressive but slow, inaccurate, and effortful. Many other findings emerge, such as selection point ‘drift’ in the absence of feedback. These results and the organising framework provide a foundation for innovation and understanding of air pointing interaction.Item Metadata only Analysis and comparison of target assistance techniques for relative ray-cast pointing(Elsevier, 2013) Bateman, Scott; Mandryk, Regan L.; Gutwin, Carl; Xiao, RobertPointing at displays from a distance is becoming a common method of interacting with computer applications and entertainment systems, using devices such as the Wii Remote, the PlayStation Move controller, or the Microsoft Kinect. These systems often implement relative forms of ray-cast pointing, in which the user simply points a hand-held input device towards targets on the screen. Ray-casting interaction is easy for novices to learn and understand, but this technique often suffers from accuracy problems: for example, hand jitter, arm fatigue, calibration drift, or lack of skill can all reduce people’s ability to acquire and select on-screen targets. In this paper, we analyse and evaluate the idea of target assistance as a way to address the accuracy problems of ray-cast pointing. Although several assistance schemes have been proposed for mouse-based pointing, these ideas have not been tested in distant-pointing settings, and there is little knowledge available to guide design in this increasingly common interaction scenario. To establish this basic design knowledge, we carried out four studies of relative ray-casting using three different target assistance techniques—two motor-space techniques (sticky targets and a novel form of target gravity), and one acquisition-feedback technique that combined visual, tactile, and auditory feedback. Our first three studies tested each assistance technique separately, to explore how different parameters for each method affected performance and perceptibility. Our fourth study carried out a direct comparison of the best versions of each technique, and also examined the effects of distractor objects placed in the path to the target. Our studies found that the two motor-space techniques were extremely effective in improving selection accuracy without being highly obvious to users, and that the new gravity-based technique (which attracts the cursor even when it is not over the target) performed best of all. There was no observed effect on performance when the combined acquisition-feedback technique was used. Our studies are the first to comprehensively explore the optimization, performance, and perceptibility of target assistance techniques for relative ray-casting—our results provide designers with clear guidelines about what methods to use, how to configure the techniques, and what effects can be expected from their use.Item Metadata only Answering questions about unanswered questions of stack overflow(IEEE, 2013) Asaduzzaman, Muhammad; Mashiyat, Ahmed Shah; Roy, Chanchal K.; Schneider, Kevin A.Community-based question answering services accumulate large volumes of knowledge through the voluntary services of people across the globe. Stack Overflow is an example of such a service that targets developers and software engineers. In general, questions in Stack Overflow are answered in a very short time. However, we found that the number of unanswered questions has increased significantly in the past two years. Understanding why questions remain unanswered can help information seekers improve the quality of their questions, increase their chances of getting answers, and better decide when to use Stack Overflow services. In this paper, we mine data on unanswered questions from Stack Overflow. We then conduct a qualitative study to categorize unanswered questions, which reveals characteristics that would be difficult to find otherwise. Finally, we conduct an experiment to determine whether we can predict how long a question will remain unanswered in Stack Overflow.Item Metadata only App-Directed Learning: An Exploratory Study(ICSE Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, 2013) Sillito, Jonathan; Begel, AndrewItem Metadata only Application Programming Interface (API) for the Haptic Tabletop Puck(5th Annual Students’ Union Undergraduate Research Symposium, 2010) Ledo, David; Marquardt, Nicolai; Nacenta, Miguel A.; Greenberg, SaulItem Metadata only Applying geocaching principles to site-based citizen science and eliciting reactions via a technology probe(Springer, 2015) Dunlap, Matthew A.; Tang, Anthony Hoi Tin; Greenberg, SaulSite-based citizen science occurs when volunteers work with scientists to collect data at particular field locations. The benefit is greater data collection at lesser cost. Yet difficulties exist. We developed ScienceCaching, a prototype citizen science aid designed to mitigate four specific problems by applying aspects from another thriving location-based activity: geocaching as enabled by mobile devices. Specifically, to ease problems in data collection, ScienceCaching treats sites as geocaches: Volunteers find sites opportunistically via geocaching methods and use equipment and other materials pre-stored in cache containers. To ease problems in data validation, ScienceCaching flags outlier data as it is entered so that on-site volunteers can be immediately check and correct data. Additionally, other volunteers are directed to that site at a later time for further readings that provide data redundancy. To ease volunteer training, ScienceCaching directs volunteers to training sites on an as-needed basis, where they are taught and tested against known measures. To ease volunteer coordination, ScienceCaching automatically directs volunteers to particular sites of interest, and real-time communication between volunteers and scientist is enabled as needed. We developed ScienceCaching primarily as a technology probe—a working but quite limited system—to embody these ideas and to evaluate their worthiness by eliciting reactions from scientists involved in citizen science. Scientists saw many opportunities in using fixed location caches and geocaching techniques to aid citizen science. Yet they expanded the discussion. Amongst these, they emphasized practical concerns that must be addressed, and they argued that future systems should carefully consider the role of the social experience—both the “online” experience and the shared physical experience of visiting sites.Item Metadata only Augmenting Emotional Requirements with Emotion Markers and Emotion Prototypes(IEEE, 2009) Callele, David; Neufeld, Eric; Schneider, KevinA production-phase weakness in emotional requirements was identified and resolved during a follow-up study. The definition of emotional requirements was extended to include emotion prototypes and emotion markers. Improved practices for identifying media assets for emotional requirements were developed, enhancing their utility to the production process.Item Metadata only Augmenting tandem language learning with the TandemTable(ACM, 2013) Paluka, Erik; Collins, ChristopherIn this paper, we present our computer-assisted language learning system called TandemTable. It is designed for a multi-touch tabletop and is meant to aid co-located tandem language learners during their learning sessions. By suggesting topics of discussion, and presenting learners with a variety of conversation-focused collaborative activities with shared digital artifacts, the system helps to inspire conversations and help them flow.Item Metadata only Authorship in Art/Science Collaboration is Tricky(2013) MacDonald, Lindsay; Ledo, David; Nacenta, Miguel; Brosz, John; Carpendale, SheelaghItem Metadata only Auto-tagging Emails with User Stories Using Project Context(Springer, 2010) Sohan, S.M.; Richter, Michael M.; Maurer, FrankIn distributed agile teams, people often use email as a knowledge sharing tool to clarify the project requirements (aka user stories). Knowledge about the project included in these emails is easily lost when recipients leave the project or delete emails for various reasons. However, the knowledge contained in the emails may be needed for useful purposes such as re-engineering software, changing vendor and so on. But, it is difficult to relate texts such as emails to certain topics because the relation is not explicit. In this paper, we present and evaluate a technique for automatically relating emails with user stories based on their text and context similarity. Agile project management tools can use this technique to automatically build a knowledge base that is otherwise costly to produce and maintain.Item Metadata only An automatic framework for extracting and classifying near-miss clone genealogies(IEEE, 2011) Saha, R.K.; Roy, C.K.; Schneider, K.A.Extracting code clone genealogies across multiple versions of a program and classifying them according to their change patterns underlies the study of code clone evolution. While there are a few studies in the area, the approaches do not handle near-miss clones well and the associated tools are often computationally expensive. To address these limitations, we present a framework for automatically extracting both exact and near-miss clone genealogies across multiple versions of a program and for identifying their change patterns using a few key similarity factors. We have developed a prototype clone genealogy extractor, applied it to three open source projects including the Linux Kernel, and evaluated its accuracy in terms of precision and recall. Our experience shows that the prototype is scalable, adaptable to different clone detection tools, and can automatically identify evolution patterns of both exact and near-miss clones by constructing their genealogies.