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M-ITI Seminars
Madeira-ITI organises seminars and invited talks in the areas of Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction. On this page you find an overview of the most recent seminars. Click the title of a seminar for more detailed information.
Designing a Better Automotive Interface in (Almost) No Time
Automotive interfaces are becoming ever more complicated and challenging to use, adding to the many demands on driver attention and increasing risks on the road. This seminar will present the results and lessons learned from an unusual project to design an innovative multimodal, multimedia automotive interface for the next generation of cars. Driven by a combination of safety-critical concerns and aesthetics, an interdisciplinary design team devised a distinctive design emphasizing both style and simplified interaction with strong visual design.
The grand challenge in verified software
We describe the current status of the grand challenge in verified software. After giving a summary of the current state of the art in software verification, we describe some of the pilot projects now underway. These include work on operating system kernels and on a biometric-based security system. The objective is to challenge tool developers to make more advances in automatic verification.
Moving Messages: the art of kinetic typography
We are in the midst of a transition from book culture to digital culture. What are the differences between communicating on paper and on screen? Do we read and interpret differently with these two formats? What role does sound play in communicating messages to an audience? This presentation will answer those questions with a variety of examples, emphasizing time-based communication, whose goals can be information, inspiration, or entertainment.
Daydreaming machine
Human interaction with technical artifacts is often mediated by treating them as if they are intentional and alive. We exclaim "my car doesn’t want to start," or "my computer loves to crash." Yet, of increasing cultural importance are systems designed to appear intelligent and to perform tasks formerly seen as the realm of humans. Such systems now inhabit our communication devices (“smart” mobile phones), entertainments and arts (CGI and computer game characters), households (robotic appliances), and even our own bodies (bioengineering).
In Favor of Complexity
Why are things so complex? Because the world is complex. Our tools must reflect reality. Complexity can be good, leading to a rich, satisfying life, filled with rich, satisfying experiences. We must distinguish complexity from confusion, perplexity, and unintelligibility. The goal is complexity with order, lucidity and understandability.
Characterful Speech Synthesis
Speech synthesis is a key enabling technology for pervasive computing and the personification of autonomous agents as well as a key requirement for accessability. In this talk I will present the current state of the art speech synthesis technique 'unit selection' and how to integrate this synthesis technology into common applications.
Design for Intuitive Understanding
The presentation will be about my design approach that emphasizes our sensual perception in relation to the subject of our intuition.
Spatial audio interfaces: supporting multiple audio streams without tears
Auditory interfaces are used for interaction in mobile environments when access to the visual display can be too distracting or might not even be a possibility. However, a key problem with audio, as opposed to visual displays, is dealing with multiple simultaneous outputs. How 3D audio techniques might be implemented in such an interactive environment and how to manage multiple audio streams without overloading the user are the key questions behind this research.
Media in Motion: Networks, Meshworks and Mediated Spaces
A small, portable, solar-powered Bluetooth server, which pushes out ringtones, images, movies and games to passers-by has been designed for an urban environment. Since user acceptance of technologies is important to the success of such installations, we conducted a survey ascertaining perceptions about Bluetooth as a means of sharing media. Our work demonstrates the technosocial possibilities which result from establishing localized mediated spaces or meshworks, using Bluetooth which I will discuss in this talk.&n
A Soft Global Precedence Constraint
Hard and soft precedence constraints play a key role in many application domains. In telecommunications, one application is the configuration of call control feature subscriptions where the task is to sequence a set of user-selected features subject to a set of hard (catalogue) precedence constraints and a set of soft (user-selected) precedence constraints. When no such sequence exists, the task is to find an optimal relaxation by discarding some features or user precedences. For this purpose, we present the global constraint SOFTPREC.
