The utilisation of biometrics in mobile scenarios is increasing remarkably. At the same time, handwritten signature recognition is one of the modalities with highest potential of use for those applications where customers are used to sign in those traditional processes. However, several improvements have to be made in order to reach acceptable levels of performance, reliability and interoperability. The evaluation carried out in this study contributes with multiple results obtained from 43 users signing 60 times, divided in three sessions, in eight different capture devices, being six of them mobile devices and the other two digitisers specially made for signing and used as a baseline. At each session, a total of 20 signatures per user are captured by each device, so that the evaluation here reported a total of 20 640 signatures, stored in ISO/IEC 19794-7 format. The algorithm applied is a DTW-based one, particularly modified for mobile environments. The results analysed include interoperability, visual feedback and modality tests. One of the big challenges of this research was to discover if the handwritten signature modality in mobile devices should be split into two different modalities, one for those cases when the signature is performed with a stylus, and another when the fingertip is used for signing. Many relevant conclusions have been collected and, over all, multiple improvements have been reached contributing to future deployments of biometrics in mobile environments.

Biometric recognition is currently implemented in several authentication contexts, most recently in mobile devices where it is expected to complement or even replace traditional authentication modalities such as PIN (Personal Identification Number) or passwords. The assumed convenience characteristics of biometrics are transparency, reliability and ease-of-use, however, the question of whether biometric recognition is as intuitive and straightforward to use is open to debate. Can biometric systems make some tasks easier for people with accessibility concerns? To investigate this question, an accessibility evaluation of a mobile app was conducted where test subjects withdraw money from a fictitious ATM (Automated Teller Machine) scenario. The biometric authentication mechanisms used include face, voice, and fingerprint. Furthermore, we employed traditional modalities of PIN and pattern in order to check if biometric recognition is indeed a real improvement. The trial test subjects within this work were people with real-life accessibility concerns. A group of people without accessibility concerns also participated, providing a baseline performance. Experimental results are presented concerning performance, HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and accessibility, grouped according to category of accessibility concern. Our results reveal links between individual modalities and user category establishing guidelines for future accessible biometric products.

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Abstract-Biometric recognition is nowadays widely used in smartphones, making the users' authentication easier and more transparent than PIN codes or patterns. Starting from this idea, the EU project PIDaaS aims to create a secure authentication system through mobile devices based on voice and face recognition as two of the most reliable and user-accepted modalities. This work introduces the project and the first PIDaaS usability evaluation carried out by means of the well-known HBSI model. In this experiment, participants interact with a mobile device using the PIDaaS system under laboratory conditions: video recorded and assisted by an operator. Our findings suggest variability among sessions in terms of usability and feed the next PIDaaS HCI design.

Along with the necessity to solve the problems due to the misuse of biometric systems and thus the consistent increase in the final products error rates, a usability evaluation on handwritten signature recognition was carried out. Furthermore, according to the popularity of mobile devices and the market trends, the evaluation was performed signing in mobile scenarios with smart phones, tablets and other common mobile devices. This study reveals interesting results correlating habituation and preferences with better or worst results and it shows the need of involve the user more incisively in the development of biometric solutions, not only for comfort issues but for better systems throughput

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Up to now, biometric recognition has shown significant advantages as to be considered a reliable solution for security systems in mobile environments. Nevertheless, due to the short lifetime of biometrics in mobile devices, a handful of concerns regarding usability and accessibility need to be covered in order to meet users’ requirements. This work is focused on analysing the usability and accessibility of a face recognition system used by visually impaired people, focusing on the time spent in the process, which is a critical aspect. Specifically, we cover different key questions including which kind of feedback is more useful for visually impaired users and beneficial for performance and how is the performance evolution in contrast with the time spent in the recognition. Our findings suggest that several parameters improve along with the time spent in the process, including performance. The audio feedback provided in real time involves also better performance and user experience than instructions given previously.