Recursos

Proyectos/Publicaciones

TorBook: a tangible book for older adults

Tangible User Interfaces allow users to manipulate digital information while taking advantage of their skills in using physical objects. This may be especially advantageous for older users with a lack of experience in technology use. This paper presents the implementation of TorBook, a tangible user interface in book format that detects the page that is open. We conducted an evaluation with 20 older adults to evaluate the functionality of TorBook. We find that participants feel comfortable with a tangible interface that uses a book metaphor, but that manipulation must be improved to become as similar as possible in its use as a regular book.

Tangible Older adults Book Design
DescargarVer enlace Iyubanit Rodríguez, Simón Rodríguez, Andrés Lucero, Valeria Herskovic 2019
EmoBall: a study on a tangible interface to self-report emotional information considering digital competences

Monitoring emotional information is highly complex: it is difficult to accurately register it due to subjectivity and technical complexities; and it is difficult to provide reliability and incorporate contextual information. However, it is an important problem in healthcare, since it is useful to monitor people, especially if they are at a high risk of depression or other mental illnesses. Research in affective computing seeks to generate new methodologies to help store, analyze and share this information. Several techniques have been proposed to monitor emotions. One of them is self-report, which is a subjective method of measuring emotions from the perspective of the individual. This work presents a new tangible interface to self-report emotions, called EmoBall, specifically designed for people with low digital competences, since it requires practically no previous knowledge of technology. We evaluated this interface and analyze the results of the evaluation, considering the digital skills of the interviewed users. We found EmoBall to be a promising first step towards a tangible interface to self-report emotions; however, we did not find evidence of digital competences affecting user perceptions of the device. This paper discusses our insights regarding the reasons for these results, as well as directions for future research.

Tangible interface Monitoring Emotions
DescargarVer enlace Carolina Fuentes, Iyubanit Rodríguez, Valeria Herskovic 2015
La ingeniería de requerimientos y su importancia en el desarrollo de proyectos de software

With the realization of this article it is to give a better panorama about the concepts and characteristic of the Engineering of Requirements (IR), looking for to stand out their importance inside the cycle of development of projects of software development, to know the different alternative or techniques that exist to identify them, as well as to show the importance that have the automated tools inside this process of administration of requirements.

Requirements Requirements Engineering Tools Techniques
DescargarVer enlace Michael Arias 2005
El comercio electrónico en la sociedad costarricense

El comercio electrónico se presenta en la sociedad costarricense como una nueva forma de realizar negocios, como una estrategia de las compañías para mantener competitividad y como forma de mostrarse y expanderse a través de todo el mundo. Sin embargo, como todo proceso nuevo, el e-commerce trae con sigo transformaciones y temores que se deben superar. Esta bien un cambio cultural y requiere, sin duda, un proceso de educación para lograr incorporarlo en la cotidianeidad. Requiere además cambios en el aparato legal, económico y social de nuestra sociedad. Este trabajo presenta algunos de los factores que se deben superar y algunos beneficios que el comercio electrónico puede traer a nuestra sociedad.

Comercio electrónico Intercambio de datos Tecnología de información
Ver enlace Mauricio Fernández Araya, Yorleny Salas Araya 2003
Exploring Tangible Ways to Evaluate User Experience for Elders

While user experience assessment enables understanding users' perception about a product, limitations have been encountered when elders use questionnaires to evaluate user experience. In this paper we present the design process of Aestimo, a tangible interface to assist elderly people when evaluating the user experience of interactive prototypes. Our prototype is a simplification of the AttrakDiff questionnaire, which gives a chance to record one's overall opinion (i.e., speech) and emotions. In addition, our design uses playful interaction styles that are familiar to the elderly. In a preliminary evaluation, elderly found Aestimo entertaining and easy to use. As future work, we aim to explore new materials in building Aestimo and to perform a comprehensive evaluation with several elders.

User experience design Tangible interface Elderly people
DescargarVer enlace Iyubanit Rodríguez, Maria Karyda, Andrés Lucero, Valeria Herskovic 2018
User Interfaces for Self-reporting Emotions: a Systematic Literature Review

Affective computing has focused on emotion acquisition using techniques of objective (sensors, facial recognition, physiological signals) and subjective measurement (self-report). Each technique has advantages and drawbacks, and a combination of the information generated from each could provide systems more balanced and accurate information about user emotions. However, there are several benefits to self-reporting emotions, over objective techniques: the collected information may be more precise and it is less intrusive to determine. This systematic literature review focuses on analyzing which technologies have been proposed to conduct subjective measurements of emotions through self-report. We aim to understand the state of the art regarding the features of interfaces for emotional self-report, identify the context for which they were designed, and describe several other aspects of the technologies. A SLR was conducted, resulting in 18 selected papers, 13 of which satisfied the inclusion criteria. We identified most existing systems use graphical user interfaces, and there are very few proposals that use tangible user interfaces to self-report emotional information, which may be an opportunity to design novel interfaces, especially for populations with low digital skills, e.g. older adults.

Affective computing Self-report Emotions
Ver enlace Carolina Fuentes, Carmen Gerea, Valeria Herskovic, Maíra Marques, Iyubanit Rodríguez, Pedro O. Rossel 2015
Educación intercultural en la carrera de informática empresarial de la Sede de Occidente de la Universidad de Costa Rica: una observación in situ.
Yorleny Salas Araya 2014
La vida artificial de los virus informáticos

Publicado en revista Panorama Académico

Mauricio Fernández Araya 2005
Gifting Interpretations of Personal Data

Research on physical representations of data has often used personal data as its focus. Core aim of making personal data physical is to provoke self-reflections through a felt experience. In this paper, we present a preliminary study which employs the idea of gift-giving as a means to explore one's online data. Our main findings report strategies of relating to the data of strangers as well as a conflict between what one thought of their online self and what others were able to find. We discuss how the gifts became platforms for self-reflection, similar to physical data models. Then, we connect that to the engagement of a third person (gift-giver) in the process, highlighting the potential of such involvement. In the future, we focus on how to link people's meaningful artifacts with their personal data.

Personal Data Self-Reflections Presentation of Self
DescargarVer enlace Maria Karyda, Iyubanit Rodríguez, Andrés Lucero 2018
Incorporation of usability in the web site design in Computer Business Program

The aim of this article is to expose how the topic of usability in the course Multimedia, which is part of the Business program imparted by Universidad de Costa Rica in Western Campus at Grecia location. The study took place on I semester 2011 and it used the teaching strategy called case study, where students had to design an Internet shopping cart graphical user interface for a specific user type. Before making the design, students characterized the selected users and then they had to assess the usability of the final design. The results of the evaluation of the design of the interface by the selected users reflected that people improved with respect to the usability of the application, since 81.25% of the designs received a positive assessment from users. To determine if students assimilated usability issues, a survey based on the technique of Learning Curve was applied. The results indicated that students scored 9.07% on the question of expertise with the topic of usability, after making the case study.

Usability Teaching strategy Web applications Case study Learning curve
DescargarVer enlace Iyubanit Rodríguez 2015