Exploratory search confront users with challenges in expressing search intents as the current search interfaces require investigating result listings to identify search directions, iterative typing, and reformulating queries. We present the design of Exploration Wall, a touch-based search user interface that allows incremental exploration and sense-making of large information spaces by combining entity search, flexible use of result entities as query parameters, and spatial configuration of search streams that are visualized for interaction. Entities can be flexibly reused to modify and create new search streams, and manipulated to inspect their relationships with other entities. Data comprising of task-based experiments comparing Exploration Wall with conventional search user interface indicate that Exploration Wall achieves significantly improved recall for exploratory search tasks while preserving precision. Subjective feedback supports our design choices and indicates improved user satisfaction and engagement. Our findings can help to design user interfaces that can effectively support exploratory search on touch devices.

We are pleased to welcome Designing Interactive Systems DIS 2018 to Hong Kong. DIS 2018 is the first of its kind in two ways. It is in Asia for the first time. It is also in an art and design school for the first time. The theme of the conference is Design and Diversity. The theme reflects a classic design themeand also a foundational distinction in philosophy-of universals and particulars. Should we, as designers, follow Silicon Valley in its quest for products that engage everyone on the planet, or the architect Glenn Murcutt's conviction that he can only build in places he knows so well that his designs can be outstanding? The underlying logic of this question divides designers and design disciplines and emerges in every design process. This theme operated as a guiding tool for selecting our four keynotes, professors Jodi Forlizzi, Kun-pyo Lee, Phoebe Sengers and Erik Stolterman. During their years in design, they have lived through its diversities. We were happy that they accepted the challenge to share their experiences and thoughts about diversity to the benefit of our community. The theme was also our tool for directing the DIS community into the future. A few years from now, we hope, we will start to see answers to the challenges our keynotes are posing to us. The nucleus of the conference organization were two chairs and three technical chairs. This small group invited sixteen Subcommittee Chairs, three Pictorials chairs, and two chairs each for Workshops, Provocations and Work-in-Progress, Doctoral Consortium, and Demos. These chairs recruited 100 Associate Chairs, who recruited 1818 reviewers. Our review and decision schedule was brutal, but the organization worked through it efficiently, always with humor, and with collegial respect. DIS 2018 received 645 submissions: 405 for full papers and notes submissions; 71 for pictorials; 23 for workshops submissions; 107 for Provocations and Work-in-Progress (out of these, 19 were Provocations); 20 for Doctoral Consortium Submissions; and 19 for Demos. Acceptance rates were: 23% for papers and notes, 24% Pictorials, 55% for Workshops, 73% for Demos, 53% for PWiPs, and 50% for Doctoral Consortium. All this work led into a highly competitive conference between 9-13 June. June 9-10 were reserved for Workshops and Doctoral Consortium, and June 11-13 for 28 paper sessions. Pictorials are not in separate sessions; they are treated the same way as Full Papers. The 11th of June became an Experience Night of Demos, PWiPs, and a small design exhibition, which illuminated interaction design in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta. As extra, we organized a postconference trip to a few technology companies in Shenzhen, China. The program reflects the highly diverse nature of our discipline. We could not see any particular trends in papers, but a few observations may be possible. Two thirds of submissions focused on the following two human-oriented subcommittees: Experience and Methods and Processes. In comparison, the two technically oriented committees were smaller, but th...

Widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is substantially affecting the human condition in ways that are not yet well understood. Negative unintended consequences abound including the perpetuation and exacerbation of societal inequalities and divisions via algorithmic decision making. We present six grand challenges for the scientific community to create AI technologies that are humancentered, that is, ethical, fair, and enhance the human condition. These grand challenges are the result of an international collaboration across academia, industry and government and represent the consensus views of a group of 26 experts in the field of human-centered artificial intelligence (HCAI). In essence, these challenges advocate for a human-centered approach to AI that (1) is centered in human wellbeing, (2) is designed responsibly, (3) respects privacy, (4) follows human-centered design principles, ( 5) is subject to appropriate governance and oversight, and (6) interacts with individuals while respecting human's cognitive capacities. We hope that these challenges and their associated research directions serve as a call for action to conduct research and development in AI that serves as a force multiplier towards more fair, equitable and sustainable societies.

We present visual re-ranking, an interactive visualization technique for multi-aspect information retrieval. In multi-aspect search, the information need of the user consists of more than one aspect or query simultaneously. While visualization and interactive search user interface techniques for improving user interpretation of search results have been proposed, the current research lacks understanding on how useful these are for the user: whether they lead to quantifiable benefits in perceiving the result space and allow faster, and more precise retrieval. Our technique visualizes relevance and document density on a two-dimensional map with respect to the query phrases. Pointing to a location on the map specifies a weight distribution of the relevance to each of the query phrases, according to which search results are re-ranked. User experiments compared our technique to a uni-dimensional search interface with typed query and ranked result list, in perception and retrieval tasks. Visual reranking yielded improved accuracy in perception, higher precision in retrieval and overall faster task execution. Our findings demonstrate the utility of visual re-ranking, and can help designing search user interfaces that support multi-aspect search.

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More than one billion smartphone users are estimated by 2014. With this in mind, visiting cultural heritage sites and exhibits may offer new level of engagement and entertainment just reaching down in our pockets. With orders of magnitude more computational horsepower than a five years-old desktop machine, stuffed with all sorts of sensors, these modern gizmos have a largely untapped potential to gain us access to personalized and on-demand information wherever it is needed. This paper is exactly about this, exploring with several case studies how these devices may become part of a memorable experience during a visit that one may want to share with friends and relatives. Specifically, the paper will focus on the definition of the user-experience (UX), on integration issues, and on context detection within augmented environments in cultural heritage sites, along with a discussion on the lessons learnt.Mobile access; context based information; cultural heritage fruition.

Data management and processing to enable predictive analytics in cyber physical systems holds the promise of creating insight over underlying processes, discovering anomalous behaviours and predicting imminent failures threatening a normal and smooth production process. In this context, proactive strategies can be adopted, as enabled by predictive analytics. Predictive analytics in turn can make a shift in traditional maintenance approaches to more effective optimising their cost and transforming maintenance from a necessary evil to a strategic business factor. Empowered by the aforementioned points, this paper discusses a novel methodology for remaining useful life (RUL) estimation enabling predictive maintenance of industrial equipment using partial knowledge over its degradation function and the parameters that are affecting it. Moreover, the design and prototype implementation of a plug-n-play end-to-end cloud architecture, supporting predictive maintenance of industrial equipment is presented integrating the aforementioned concept as a service. This is achieved by integrating edge gateways, data stores at both the edge and the cloud, and various applications, such as predictive analytics, visualization and scheduling, integrated as services in the cloud system. The proposed approach has been implemented into a prototype and tested in an industrial use case related to the maintenance of a robotic arm. Obtained results show the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed methodology in supporting predictive analytics in the era of Industry 4.0.

Locating points of interest (POIs) in cities is typically facilitated by visual aids such as paper maps, brochures, and mobile applications. However, these techniques require visual attention, which ideally should be on the surroundings. Non-visual techniques for navigating towards specific POIs typically lack support for free exploration of the city or more detailed guidance. To overcome these issues, we propose a multimodal, wearable system for alerting the user of nearby recommended POIs. The system, built around a tactile glove, provides audio-tactile cues when a new POI is in the vicinity, and more detailed information and guidance if the user expresses interest in this POI. We evaluated the system in a field study, comparing it to a visual baseline application. The encouraging results show that the glovebased system helps keep the attention on the surroundings and that its performance is on the same level as that of the baseline.