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(1 - 4 of 4)
- Title
- MULTI-TOUCH FOR GENERAL-PURPOSE COMPUTING: AN EXAMINATION OF TEXT ENTRY.
- Creator
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Varcholik, Paul, Hughes, Charles, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
In recent years, multi-touch has been heralded as a revolution in human-computer interaction. Multi-touch provides features such as gestural interaction, tangible interfaces, pen-based computing, and interface customization features embraced by an increasingly tech-savvy public. However, multi-touch platforms have not been adopted as "everyday" computer interaction devices; that is, multi-touch has not been applied to general-purpose computing. The questions this thesis seeks to address are...
Show moreIn recent years, multi-touch has been heralded as a revolution in human-computer interaction. Multi-touch provides features such as gestural interaction, tangible interfaces, pen-based computing, and interface customization features embraced by an increasingly tech-savvy public. However, multi-touch platforms have not been adopted as "everyday" computer interaction devices; that is, multi-touch has not been applied to general-purpose computing. The questions this thesis seeks to address are: Will the general public adopt these systems as their chief interaction paradigm? Can multi-touch provide such a compelling platform that it displaces the desktop mouse and keyboard? Is multi-touch truly the next revolution in human-computer interaction? As a first step toward answering these questions, we observe that general-purpose computing relies on text input, and ask: "Can multi-touch, without a text entry peripheral, provide a platform for efficient text entry? And, by extension, is such a platform viable for general-purpose computing?" We investigate these questions through four user studies that collected objective and subjective data for text entry and word processing tasks. The first of these studies establishes a benchmark for text entry performance on a multi-touch platform, across a variety of input modes. The second study attempts to improve this performance by examining an alternate input technique. The third and fourth studies include mouse-style interaction for formatting rich-text on a multi-touch platform, in the context of a word processing task. These studies establish a foundation for future efforts in general-purpose computing on a multi-touch platform. Furthermore, this work details deficiencies in tactile feedback with modern multi-touch platforms, and describes an exploration of audible feedback. Finally, the thesis conveys a vision for a general-purpose multi-touch platform, its design and rationale.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2011
- Identifier
- CFE0003711, ucf:48798
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0003711
- Title
- Code Park: A New 3D Code Visualization Tool and IDE.
- Creator
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Khaloo, Pooya, Laviola II, Joseph, Foroosh, Hassan, Leavens, Gary, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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We introduce Code Park, a novel tool for visualizing codebases in a 3D game-like environment. Code Park aims to improve a programmer's understanding of an existing codebase in a manner that is both engaging and fun to be appealing especially for novice users such as students. It achieves these goals by laying out the codebase in a 3D park-like environment. Each class in the codebase is represented as a 3D room-like structure. Constituent parts of the class (variable, member functions, etc.)...
Show moreWe introduce Code Park, a novel tool for visualizing codebases in a 3D game-like environment. Code Park aims to improve a programmer's understanding of an existing codebase in a manner that is both engaging and fun to be appealing especially for novice users such as students. It achieves these goals by laying out the codebase in a 3D park-like environment. Each class in the codebase is represented as a 3D room-like structure. Constituent parts of the class (variable, member functions, etc.) are laid out on the walls, resembling a syntax-aware (")wallpaper("). The users can interact with the codebase using an overview, and a first-person viewer mode. They also can edit, compile and run code in this environment. We conducted three user studies to evaluate Code Park's usability and suitability for organizing an existing project. Our results indicate that Code Park is easy to get familiar with and significantly helps in code understanding. Further, the users unanimously believed that Code Park was an engaging tool to work with.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017
- Identifier
- CFE0006752, ucf:51838
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006752
- Title
- Exploring 3D User Interface Technologies for Improving the Gaming Experience.
- Creator
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Kulshreshth, Arun, Laviola II, Joseph, Hughes, Charles, Da Vitoria Lobo, Niels, Masuch, Maic, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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3D user interface technologies have the potential to make games more immersive (&) engaging and thus potentially provide a better user experience to gamers. Although 3D user interface technologies are available for games, it is still unclear how their usage affects game play and if there are any user performance benefits. A systematic study of these technologies in game environments is required to understand how game play is affected and how we can optimize the usage in order to achieve...
Show more3D user interface technologies have the potential to make games more immersive (&) engaging and thus potentially provide a better user experience to gamers. Although 3D user interface technologies are available for games, it is still unclear how their usage affects game play and if there are any user performance benefits. A systematic study of these technologies in game environments is required to understand how game play is affected and how we can optimize the usage in order to achieve better game play experience.This dissertation seeks to improve the gaming experience by exploring several 3DUI technologies. In this work, we focused on stereoscopic 3D viewing (to improve viewing experience) coupled with motion based control, head tracking (to make games more engaging), and faster gesture based menu selection (to reduce cognitive burden associated with menu interaction while playing). We first studied each of these technologies in isolation to understand their benefits for games. We present the results of our experiments to evaluate benefits of stereoscopic 3D (when coupled with motion based control) and head tracking in games. We discuss the reasons behind these findings and provide recommendations for game designers who want to make use of these technologies to enhance gaming experiences. We also present the results of our experiments with finger-based menu selection techniques with an aim to find out the fastest technique. Based on these findings, we custom designed an air-combat game prototype which simultaneously uses stereoscopic 3D, head tracking, and finger-count shortcuts to prove that these technologies could be useful for games if the game is designed with these technologies in mind. Additionally, to enhance depth discrimination and minimize visual discomfort, the game dynamically optimizes stereoscopic 3D parameters (convergence and separation) based on the user's look direction. We conducted a within subjects experiment where we examined performance data and self-reported data on users perception of the game. Our results indicate that participants performed significantly better when all the 3DUI technologies (stereoscopic 3D, head-tracking and finger-count gestures) were available simultaneously with head tracking as a dominant factor. We explore the individual contribution of each of these technologies to the overall gaming experience and discuss the reasons behind our findings.Our experiments indicate that 3D user interface technologies could make gaming experience better if used effectively. The games must be designed to make use of the 3D user interface technologies available in order to provide a better gaming experience to the user. We explored a few technologies as part of this work and obtained some design guidelines for future game designers. We hope that our work will serve as the framework for the future explorations of making games better using 3D user interface technologies.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0005643, ucf:50190
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005643
- Title
- Adaptive Architectural Strategies for Resilient Energy-Aware Computing.
- Creator
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Ashraf, Rizwan, DeMara, Ronald, Lin, Mingjie, Wang, Jun, Jha, Sumit, Johnson, Mark, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
Reconfigurable logic or Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices have the ability to dynamically adapt the computational circuit based on user-specified or operating-condition requirements. Such hardware platforms are utilized in this dissertation to develop adaptive techniques for achieving reliable and sustainable operation while autonomously meeting these requirements. In particular, the properties of resource uniformity and in-field reconfiguration via on-chip processors are exploited...
Show moreReconfigurable logic or Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices have the ability to dynamically adapt the computational circuit based on user-specified or operating-condition requirements. Such hardware platforms are utilized in this dissertation to develop adaptive techniques for achieving reliable and sustainable operation while autonomously meeting these requirements. In particular, the properties of resource uniformity and in-field reconfiguration via on-chip processors are exploited to implement Evolvable Hardware (EHW). EHW utilize genetic algorithms to realize logic circuits at runtime, as directed by the objective function. However, the size of problems solved using EHW as compared with traditional approaches has been limited to relatively compact circuits. This is due to the increase in complexity of the genetic algorithm with increase in circuit size. To address this research challenge of scalability, the Netlist-Driven Evolutionary Refurbishment (NDER) technique was designed and implemented herein to enable on-the-fly permanent fault mitigation in FPGA circuits. NDER has been shown to achieve refurbishment of relatively large sized benchmark circuits as compared to related works. Additionally, Design Diversity (DD) techniques which are used to aid such evolutionary refurbishment techniques are also proposed and the efficacy of various DD techniques is quantified and evaluated.Similarly, there exists a growing need for adaptable logic datapaths in custom-designed nanometer-scale ICs, for ensuring operational reliability in the presence of Process, Voltage, and Temperature (PVT) and, transistor-aging variations owing to decreased feature sizes for electronic devices. Without such adaptability, excessive design guardbands are required to maintain the desired integration and performance levels. To address these challenges, the circuit-level technique of Self-Recovery Enabled Logic (SREL) was designed herein. At design-time, vulnerable portions of the circuit identified using conventional Electronic Design Automation tools are replicated to provide post-fabrication adaptability via intelligent techniques. In-situ timing sensors are utilized in a feedback loop to activate suitable datapaths based on current conditions that optimize performance and energy consumption. Primarily, SREL is able to mitigate the timing degradations caused due to transistor aging effects in sub-micron devices by reducing the stress induced on active elements by utilizing power-gating. As a result, fewer guardbands need to be included to achieve comparable performance levels which leads to considerable energy savings over the operational lifetime.The need for energy-efficient operation in current computing systems has given rise to Near-Threshold Computing as opposed to the conventional approach of operating devices at nominal voltage. In particular, the goal of exascale computing initiative in High Performance Computing (HPC) is to achieve 1 EFLOPS under the power budget of 20MW. However, it comes at the cost of increased reliability concerns, such as the increase in performance variations and soft errors. This has given rise to increased resiliency requirements for HPC applications in terms of ensuring functionality within given error thresholds while operating at lower voltages. My dissertation research devised techniques and tools to quantify the effects of radiation-induced transient faults in distributed applications on large-scale systems. A combination of compiler-level code transformation and instrumentation are employed for runtime monitoring to assess the speed and depth of application state corruption as a result of fault injection. Finally, fault propagation models are derived for each HPC application that can be used to estimate the number of corrupted memory locations at runtime. Additionally, the tradeoffs between performance and vulnerability and the causal relations between compiler optimization and application vulnerability are investigated.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0006206, ucf:52889
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006206
