Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

ANR

TurboTouch (PRC, 2014-2019)

Participants : Géry Casiez [contact person] , Sylvain Malacria, Mathieu Nancel, Thomas Pietrzak.

High-performance touch interactions

Touch-based interactions with computing systems are greatly affected by two interrelated factors: the transfer functions applied on finger movements, and latency. This project aims at transforming the design of touch transfer functions from black art to science to support high-performance interactions. We are working on the precise characterization of the functions used and the latency observed in current touch systems. We are developing a testbed environment to support multidisciplinary research on touch transfer functions and will use this testbed to design latency reduction and compensation techniques, and new transfer functions.

Partners: Inria Lille's VALSE team (formerly NON-A) and the “Perceptual-motor behavior group” from the Institute of Movement Sciences.

Web site: http://mjolnir.lille.inria.fr/turbotouch/

Related publications in 2019: [13], [12]

Causality (JCJC, 2019-2023)

Participants : Géry Casiez, Stéphane Huot, Sylvain Malacria, Mathieu Nancel [contact person] , Philippe Schmid.

Integrating Temporality and Causality to the Design of Interactive Systems

The project addresses a fundamental limitation in the way interfaces and interactions are designed and even thought about today, an issue we call procedural information loss: once a task has been completed by a computer, significant information that was used or produced while processing it is rendered inaccessible regardless of the multiple other purposes it could serve. It hampers the identification and solving of identifiable usability issues, as well as the development of new and beneficial interaction paradigms. We will explore, develop, and promote finer granularity and better-described connections between the causes of those changes, their context, their consequences, and their timing. We will apply it to facilitate the real-time detection, disambiguation, and solving of frequent timing issues related to human reaction time and system latency; to provide broader access to all levels of input data, therefore reducing the need to "hack" existing frameworks to implement novel interactive systems; and to greatly increase the scope and expressiveness of command histories, allowing better error recovery but also extended editing capabilities such as reuse and sharing of previous actions.

Web site: http://loki.lille.inria.fr/causality/

Discovery (JCJC, 2020-2024)

Participant : Sylvain Malacria [contact person] .

Promoting and improving discoverability in interactive systems

This project addresses a fundamental limitation in the way interactive systems are usually designed, as in practice they do not tend to foster the discovery of their input methods (operations that can be used to communicate with the system) and corresponding features (commands and functionalities that the system supports). Its objective is to provide generic methods and tools to help the design of discoverable interactive systems: we will define validation procedures that can be used to evaluate the discoverability of user interfaces, design and implement novel UIs that foster input method and feature discovery, and create a design framework of discoverable user interfaces. This project investigates, but is not limited to, the context of touch-based interaction and will also explore two critical timings when the user might trigger a reflective practice on the available inputs and features: while the user is carrying her task (discovery in-action); and after having carried her task by having informed reflection on her past actions (discovery on-action). This dual investigation will reveal more generic and context-independent properties that will be summarized in a comprehensive framework of discoverable interfaces. Our ambition is to trigger a significant change in the way all interactive systems and interaction techniques, existing and new, are thought, designed, and implemented with both performance and discoverability in mind.

Web site: http://ns.inria.fr/discovery/

Related publications in 2019: [21].

Inria Project Labs

BCI-LIFT (2015-2019)

Participant : Géry Casiez [contact person] .

Brain Computer Interfaces: Learning, Interaction, Feedback, Training

The goal of this large-scale initiative is to design a new generation of non-invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) that are easier to appropriate, more efficient, and suited for a larger number of people.

Partners: Inria's ATHENA, NEUROSYS, POTIOC, HYBRID & DEMAR teams, Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon (INSERM) and INSA Rouen.

Web site: https://bci-lift.inria.fr/

Related publication in 2019: [24]

AVATAR (2018-2022)

Participants : Géry Casiez, Stéphane Huot, Thomas Pietrzak [contact person] .

The next generation of our virtual selves in digital worlds

This project aims at delivering the next generation of virtual selves, or avatars, in digital worlds. In particular, we want to push further the limits of perception and interaction through our avatars to obtain avatars that are better embodied and more interactive. Loki's contribution in this project consists in designing novel 3D interaction paradigms for avatar-based interaction and to design new multi-sensory feedbacks to better feel our interactions through our avatars.

Partners: Inria's GRAPHDECO, HYBRID, MIMETIC, MORPHEO & POTIOC teams, Mel Slater (Event Lab, University Barcelona, Spain), Technicolor and Faurecia.

Web site: https://avatar.inria.fr/

Related publication in 2019: [19], [14]

Others

ParkEvolution (Carnot Inria - Carnot STAR, 2015-2019)

Participant : Géry Casiez [contact person] .

Longitudinal analysis of fine motor control for patients with Parkinson disease

This project studies the fine motor control of patients with Parkinson disease in an ecological environment, at home, without the presence of experimenters. Through longitudinal studies, we collect raw information from pointing devices to create a large database of pointing behavior data. From the analysis of this big dataset, the project aims at inferring the individual's disease progression and influence of treatments.

Partners: the “Perceptual-motor behavior group” from the Institute of Movement Sciences and Hôpital de la Timone.

Web site: http://parkevolution.org/

IRDICS (Projets Exploratoires Premier Soutien CNRS, 2018-2019)

Participants : Géry Casiez, Stéphane Huot, Sylvain Malacria, Thomas Pietrzak [contact person] .

Interface de recueil de données imparfaites pour le crowd-sourcing

Many crowdsourcing studies involve asking hundreds of participants to answer questionnaires. There is typically a trade-off between precision and certitude of participants. Usually, investigators prefer participants to be certain, at the cost of precision. The idea is that the lack of precision can be compensated by the high number of answers. In this project we are interested in studying this trade-off. We performed a first study, in which we asked participants to rate their confidence in their answer. In the next studies, we will allow participants to give several answers, but make sure the right answer is among them. In the last study, participants will be able to rank their answers based on confidence.

Partners: IRISA's DRUID team.

Related publication in 2019: [31]