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Also part of the Information Systems and Applications, incl. Internet/Web, and HCI book sub series (LNISA); International audience; The operator is frequently considered as the main sources of vulnerability in command and control systems; for example, in a 2006 survey 79% of fatal accidents in aviation were attributed to “human error.” Beyond the case of command and control systems, users’ faults occur not only at use time but also during the design and development of systems. Following Avizienis et al.’s taxonomy for faults, human-made error can be characterized as the operator’s failure to deliver services while interacting with the interactive system. Non human-made errors are called natural faults and may occur during development or set the interactive system as well as its users into an error-state during its use. Focusing on interactive systems specificities, this paper presents a comprehensive description of faults covering both development and operation phases. In correspondence with this taxonomy, we present mechanisms to avoid, remove, tolerate and mitigate faults in order to design and develop what we call “perfect” interactive systems taking into account the organization, the interactive system, the environment and the people operating them. We define an interactive system as perfect when it blends multiple and diverse properties such as usability, security, user experience, dependability, learnability, resilience … We present multiple concrete examples, from aviation and other domains, of faults affecting socio-technical systems and associated fault-tolerant mechanisms.

Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS) conference; International audience; This issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction features contributions in the intersection of human-computer interaction and software engineering, with further disciplines blending into a rich set of scientific works. 2021 is the first time the annual conference on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS) is hosted in the Netherlands and in the context of an Industrial Design department. We take this opportunity to focus on the relations and influence of the design discipline on the work of the EICS community. This resulted in a new set of topics for EICS, which were already partly reflected in the many submissions we received in three extensive review rounds throughout 2020 and the beginning of 2021. In this editorial we offer a perspective on what EICS is not yet, looking at the inclusion of and interplay with design as a related discipline.

Creative work requires the learning and practice of advanced skills, perceptual, motor, cognitive, and aesthetic, but also relies on the use of diverse materials and sophisticated tools, both physical and digital. For these reasons, creative work is a major source of inspiration for research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). My habilitation thesis looks at the work of creators: artists with years of professional practice but also learners, casual makers, and novice designers. I review the results of a series of studies, where I investigate how creators combine physical and digital representations and how these representations evolve throughout their creative process. My goal is to highlight key challenges for innovation in HCI and foresee how future interactive technologies can improve or extend current creation practices. I focus on three widespread creation activities: drawing, physical modeling, and music composition. For these activities, I present examples of systems that assist the creation process in various ways: (1) they help novices practice well-established drawing-by-observation techniques through augmented photograph models; (2) they facilitate the image production of professional illustrators while they work on paper; (3) they enable modelers to synchronize their physical models with their digital representations; (4) they allow designers to embed interactive electronics in stretchable fabrication materials; and (5) they let composers of contemporary music extend their digital environments with personal vocabularies drawn on paper with physical ink.The common goal of all these systems is to provide flexible representations, personal vocabularies, and effective interaction modalities that, on one hand, encourage exploration, and on the other hand, assist the transformation of early ideas to high-precision creative artifacts. Through the above examples, I discuss tradeoffs between sketched-based representations that support expression and structured representations from which computers can easily extract meaning. Although the greatest part of the thesis concentrates on artistic activities, I also examine how informal, sketch-based representations can benefit other tasks, such as data-annotation and data-analysis tasks. I conclude with lessons for HCI research and reflect on directions for future work.

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) enable interaction directly from brain activity. Augmented Reality (AR) on the other hand, enables the integration of virtual elements in the real world. In this thesis, we aimed at designing interactive systems associating BCIs and AR, to offer new means of hands-free interaction with real and virtual elements. In the first part, we have studied the possibility to extract different BCI paradigms in AR. We have shown that it was possible to use Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEP) in AR. Then, we have studied the possibility to extract Error-Related Potentials (ErrPs) in AR, showing that ErrPs were elicited in users facing errors, often occurring in AR. In the second part, we have deepened our research in the use of SSVEP for direct interaction in AR. We have proposed HCCA, a new algorithm for self-paced detection of SSVEP responses. Then, we have studied the design of AR interfaces, for the development of intuitive and efficient interactive systems. Lastly, we have illustrated our results, through the development of a smart-home system combining SSVEP and AR, which integrates in a commercially available smart-home system.; Les Interfaces Cerveau Ordinateur (ICO) permettent l’interaction à partir de l’activité cérébrale. La Réalité Augmentée (RA) elle, permet d’intégrer des éléments virtuels dans un environnement réel. Dans cette thèse, nous avons cherché à concevoir des systèmes interactifs exploitant des ICO dans des environnements RA, afin de proposer de nouveaux moyens d’interagir avec des éléments réels et virtuels. Dans la première partie de cette thèse, nous avons étudié la possibilité d’extraire différents signaux cérébraux dans un contexte de RA. Nous avons ainsi montré qu’il était possible d’exploiter les Potentiels Evoqués Visuels Stationnaires (SSVEP) en RA. Puis, nous avons montré la possibilité d’extraire des Potentiels d’Erreur des signaux cérébraux, lorsqu’un utilisateur est soumis à des types d’erreurs fréquents en RA. Dans la seconde partie, nous avons approfondi nos recherches sur l’utilisation des SSVEP pour l’interaction en RA. Nous avons notamment proposé HCCA, un nouvel algorithme permettant la reconnaissance asynchrone de réponses SSVEP. Nous avons ensuite étudié la conception d’interfaces de RA, pour des systèmes interactifs, intuitifs performants. Enfin nous avons illustré nos résultats à travers le développement d’un système de domotique utilisant les SSVEP et la RA, qui s’intègre à une plateforme de maison intelligente industrielle.

Part 3: Workshop on Handling Security, Usability, User Experience and Reliability in User-Centered Development Processes; International audience; System quality is assessed with respect to the value of relevant properties of that system. The level of abstraction of these properties can be very high (e.g. usability) or very low (e.g. all the “Ok” buttons in the application have the same size). These properties can be generic and thus applicable to a large group of systems (e.g. all the interactive systems should be usable) or very specific to a system (e.g. the “Quit” button in my application should always be visible). While properties identification and verification is at the core of interactive systems engineering, much less attention is paid to properties that aims at characterizing a pair (or more) of systems. In this paper, we propose to study such properties (defined as across-systems properties) and propose a notation for representing them. We propose a process for the analysis of such properties using the proposed notation. This process and analysis can be used during systems design or integration. We also present several examples of across-systems properties and demonstrate their importance and use on a simple example of aircraft cockpits buttons.

International audience; Virtual reality videos are an important element in the range of immersive contents as they open new perspectives for story-telling, journalism or education. Accessing these immersive contents through Internet streaming is however much more difficult owing to the required data rates much higher than for regular videos. While current streaming strategies rely on video compression, in this paper we investigate a radically new stance: we posit that degrading the visual quality is not the only choice to reduce the required data rate, and not necessarily the best. Instead, we propose two new impairments, Virtual Walls (VWs) and Slow Downs (SDs), that change the way the user can interact with the 360 degree video in an environment with insufficient available bandwidth. User experiments with a double-stimulus approach show that, when triggered in proper time periods, these impairments are better perceived than visual quality degradation from video compression. We confirm with network simulations the usefulness of these new types of impairments: incorporated into a FoV-based adaptation, they can enable reduction in stalls and startup delay, and increase quality in FoV, even in the presence of substantial playback buffers.

International audience; Supervised detection models can be deployed in computer security detection systems to strengthen detection. However, acquiring a training dataset is particularly expensive in this context since expert knowledge is required to annotate. Some research works rely on active learning to reduce human effort, but they often assimilate annotators to mere oracles providing ground-truth labels. Most of them completely overlook the user experience while active learning is an interactive procedure. In this paper, we introduce an end-to-end active learning system, ILAB, tailored to computer security experts needs. We have designed the active learning strategy and the user interface jointly to effectively reduce annotation effort. Our user experiments show that ILAB is an efficient active learning system that computer security experts can deploy in real-world annotation projects.

Supervised detection models can be deployed in detection systems, as an adjunct to traditionaldetection techniques, to strengthen detection. Supervised learning has been successfully applied tovarious computer security detection problems: Android applications, PDF, or portable executablefiles to mention only the most obvious examples. Despite these encouraging results, there remainsome significant barriers to the widespread deployment of machine learning in operational detectionsystems.The standard supervised learning pipeline consists of data annotation, feature extraction, trainingand evaluation. Security experts must carry out all these steps to set up supervised detectionmodels ready for deployment. In this thesis, we adopt an end-to-end approach. We work onthe whole machine learning pipeline with security experts as its core since it is crucial to pursuereal-world impact.First of all, security experts may have little knowledge about machine learning. They maytherefore have difficulty taking full advantage of this data analysis technique in their detectionsystems.This thesis provides methodological guidance to help security experts build supervised detectionmodels that suit their operational constraints. Moreover, we design and implement DIADEM, aninteractive visualization tool that helps security experts apply the methodology set out. DIADEMdeals with the machine learning machinery to let security experts focus mainly on detection.Besides, most research works assume that a representative annotated dataset is available fortraining while such datasets are particularly expensive to build in computer security. Active learninghas been introduced to reduce expert effort in annotation projects. However, it usually focuses onminimizing only the number of manual annotations, while security experts would rather minimizethe overall time spent annotating. Moreover, user experience is often overlooked while activelearning is an interactive procedure that should ensure a good expert-model interaction.This thesis proposes a solution to effectively reduce the labeling cost in computer securityannotation projects. We design and implement an end-to-end active learning system, ILAB, tailoredto security experts needs. Our user experiments on a real-world annotation project demonstratethat security experts can gather an annotated dataset with a low workload thanks to ILAB.Finally, feature extraction is usually implemented manually for each data type. Nonetheless,detection systems process many data types and designing a feature extraction method for eachof them is tedious. Automatic feature generation would significantly ease, and thus foster, thedeployment of machine learning in detection systems.In this thesis, we define the constraints that such methods should meet to be effective in buildingdetection models. We compare three state-of-the-art methods based on these criteria, and we pointout some avenues of research to better tailor these techniques to computer security experts needs., L’objectif de cette thèse est de faciliter l’utilisation de l’apprentissage supervisé dans les systèmes de détection pour renforcer la détection. Dans ce but, nous considérons toute la chaîne de traitement de l’apprentissage supervisé (annotation, extraction d’attributs, apprentissage, etévaluation) en impliquant les experts en sécurité.Tout d’abord, nous donnons des conseils méthodologiques pour les aider à construire des modèles de détection supervisés qui répondent à leurs contraintes opérationnelles. De plus, nous concevons et nous implémentons DIADEM, un outil de visualisation interactif qui aide les experts en sécurité à appliquer la méthodologie présentée. DIADEM s’occupe des rouages de l’apprentissage supervisé pour laisser les experts en sécurité se concentrer principalement sur la détection.Par ailleurs, nous proposons une solution pour réduire le coût des projets d’annotations en sécurité informatique. Nous concevons et implémentons un système d’apprentissage actif complet, ILAB, adapté aux besoins des experts en sécurité. Nos expériences utilisateur montrent qu’ils peuvent annoter un jeu de données avec une charge de travail réduite grâce à ILAB.Enfin, nous considérons la génération automatique d’attributs pour faciliter l’utilisation de l’apprentissage supervisé dans les systèmes de détection. Nous définissons les contraintes que de telles méthodes doivent remplir pour être utilisées dans le cadre de la détection de menaces.Nous comparons trois méthodes de l’état de l’art en suivant ces critères, et nous mettons en avant des pistes de recherche pour mieux adapter ces techniques aux besoins des experts en sécurité.

International audience; User interfaces for the command and control of systems usually integrate several types of interaction elements: physical space, hardware and software. Within such kind of environment, operators have to complete their tasks manipulating hardware and software elements that are distributed in the physical space. However, current tasks description notations do not take into account physical and hardware aspects beyond manipulation of input devices such as mouse and keyboard. This paper proposes a set of extensions to task modeling techniques in order to represent user goals and activities when interacting with distributed hardware and software user interfaces. These extensions are demonstrated with the HAMSTERS-XL notation and tool. These models can be analyzed and simulated to support identification of cumbersome tasks, motoric and perceptive efforts and sub-optimal UI distributions. We present how such information can be used for improving the user interface of the hardware and software distributed user interfaces. We exemplify the approach on a simple but realistic example: The Philips Hue light bulb system.

Part 3: Dealing with Conflicting User Interface Properties in User-Centered Development Processes; International audience; This paper presents a notation called QBP (Question, Behavior, Property) to represent software and system properties and their relationship. The properties are structured in a tree-shape format from very abstract and generic ones (such as safety or security) to more concrete (leave of the tree). This tree-shape representation is used in the paper to represent properties classification in several areas such as Dependable and Secure computing and Human-Computer Interaction. The notation makes it possible to connect the properties among each other and to connect them to concrete properties expressed in temporal logic. Those concrete properties are, in turn, connected to behavioral descriptions of interactive systems satisfying (or not) the properties. An example is given on a set of different traffic lights from different countries.

Part 10: Workshops; International audience; This practice-based workshop aims at exploring various methodologies and tools to design gestures that could be used in interactive systems.We argue that gesture design, which can be seen as being a smaller part of the interaction design process, is generally overlooked. Our goals are to develop various methods, some being inspired by performing arts practices, and to discuss the multicultural aspects of gesture design.

International audience; User interfaces for the command and control of transportation and navigation systems, such as aircraft cockpits, usually integrate several types of interaction elements: physical, hardware or software. Within these cyber-physical environments, operators have to complete their tasks manipulating these different types of elements. However, task description notations do not take into account physical and hardware aspects beyond manipulation of input devices such as mouse and keyboard. This paper identifies generic aspects of cyber-physical interactive systems and proposes extensions to operators' tasks description techniques, to capture them. We argue that representing cyber-physical elements explicitly and systematically in task models contribute to the design and development of usable and reliable transportation systems. These extensions are integrated within the tool-supported notation called HAMSTERS and are illustrated on a case study from the avionics domain.

International audience; This article reports on an interdisciplinary research project on movement sonification for sensori-motor learning. First, we describe different research fields which have contributed to movement sonification, from music technology including gesture-controlled sound synthesis, sonic interaction design, to research on sensori-motor learning with auditory-feedback. In particular, we propose to distinguish between sound-oriented tasks and movement-oriented tasks in experiments involving interactive sound feedback. We describe several research questions and recently published results on movement control, learning and perception. In particular, we studied the effect of the auditory feedback on movements considering several cases: from experiments on pointing and visuo-motor tracking to more complex tasks where interactive sound feedback can guide movements, or cases of sensory substitution where the auditory feedback can inform on object shapes. We also developed specific methodologies and technologies for designing the sonic feedback and movement sonification. We conclude with a discussion on key future research challenges in sensori-motor learning with movement sonification. We also point out toward promising applications such as rehabilitation, sport training or product design.

International audience; This work focuses on the use of Interactive Applications (IA) as an educational resources applied in the context of inclusive education. The Learning Object Metadata standard (LOM) is often used to facilitate the share and reuse of Learning Objects (LO). This standard suggests a wide set of metadata to describe a LO from the general, educational or even technical points of view. However this standard is not enough to describe overall the accessibility aspects and proper considerations of the Educational Interactive Applications. Therefore, this work presents a proposal to extend the LOM standard for the purpose to get extensive descriptions on the use of interactive applications as educational resources in inclusive education.

This PhD thesis focuses on plasticity for Mixed Reality (MR) User interfaces, which includes Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Augmented Virtuality (AV) applications. Today, there is a growing interest for this kind of applications thanks to the generalization of devices such as Head Mounted Displays, Depth sensors and tracking systems. Mixed Reality application can be used in a wide variety of domains such as entertainment, data visualization, education and training, and engineering. Plasticity refers to the capacity of an interactive system to withstand variations of both the system physical characteristics and the environment while preserving its usability. Usability continuity of a plastic interface is ensured whatever the context of use. Therefore, we propose a set of software models, integrated in a software solution named 3DPlasticToolkit, which allow any developer to create plastic MR user interfaces. First, we propose three models for modeling adaptation sources: a model for the description of display devices and interaction devices, a model for the description of the users and their preferences, a model for the description of data structure and semantic. These adaptation sources are taken into account by an adaptation process that deploys application components adapted to the context of use thanks to a scoring system. The deployment of these application components lets the system adapt the interaction techniques of the application of its content presentation. We also propose a redistribution process that allows the end-user to change the distribution of his/her application components across multiple dimensions: display, user and platform. Thus, it allows the end-user to switch dynamically of platform or to combine multiple platforms. The implementation of these models in 3DPlasticToolkit provides developers with a ready to use solution for the development of plastic MR user interfaces. Indeed, the solution already integrates different display devices and interaction devices and also includes multiple interaction techniques, visual effects and data visualization metaphors., Cette thèse s'intéresse à la plasticité des interfaces de Réalité Mixte (RM), c'est-à-dire les applications de Réalité Virtuelle (RV), Réalité Augmentée (RA) et de Virtualité Augmentée (AV). Il y a un réel engouement aujourd’hui pour ce type d’applications notamment grâce à la démocratisation des périphériques tels les lunettes et casques immersifs, les caméras de profondeur et les capteurs de mouvement. La Réalité Mixte trouve notamment ses usages dans le divertissement, la visualisation de données, la formation et la conception en ingénierie. La plasticité d'un système interactif est sa capacité à s'adapter aux contraintes matérielles et environnementales dans le respect de son utilisabilité. La continuité de l'utilisabilité d'une interface plastique est assurée quel que soit le contexte d'usage. Nous proposons ainsi des modèles et une solution logicielle nommée 3DPlasticToolkit afin de permettre aux développeurs de créer des interfaces de Réalité Mixtes plastiques. Tout d'abord, nous proposons trois modèles pour modéliser les sources d'adaptation : un modèle pour représenter les dispositifs d'interaction et les dispositifs d'affichage, un modèle pour représenter les utilisateurs et leurs préférences et un modèle pour représenter la structure et la sémantique des données. Ces sources d'adaptation vont être prises en compte par un processus d'adaptation qui va déployer dans une application les composants applicatifs adaptés au contexte d'usage grâce à des mécanismes de notation. Le déploiement de ces composants va permettre d'adapter à la fois les techniques d'interaction de l'application et également la présentation de son contenu. Nous proposons également un processus de redistribution qui va permettre à l'utilisateur final de changer la distribution des composants de son système sur différentes dimensions : affichage, utilisateur et plateforme. Ce processus va ainsi permettre à l'utilisateur de changer de plateforme dynamiquement ou encore de combiner plusieurs plateformes. L'implémentation de ces modèles dans 3DPlasticToolkit permet de fournir aux développeurs une solution prête à l'usage qui peut gérer les périphériques actuels de Réalité Mixte et qui inclut un certain nombre de techniques d'interaction, d'effets visuels et de métaphores de visualisation de données.

International audience; Gesture learning is a complex and multistep process where trainees are supposed to improve several psychomotor and cognitive skills. According to numerous studies, trainees need to be provided with various types of feedback to improve these skills. These studies also highlight that benefits of a given type of feedback depend on trainees situation. Therefore, feedback must be chosen according to an analysis of trainees activity. Sensorimotor approaches have investigated the impact of feedback on specific learning situations, but the analysis of gestural activity, which would allow the automatic selection of an appropriate type of feedback, is still a recurring issue. In this paper, we propose a new model for gestural training systems based on smart interaction. This model relies on a recognition module based on Naive Bayes classifiers, representing trainees activity by a vector describing their errors, and representing training environments by vectors describing their set of implemented types of feedback. We present a platform for calligraphy training we designed and developed based on our model. Through a user study, we emphasize the benefits of our approach on trainees development.

International audience; This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the IFIP WG 13.2/13.5 Joint Working Conferences: 6th International Conference on Human-Centered Software Engineering, HCSE 2016, and 8th International Conference on Human Error, Safety, and System Development, HESSD 2016, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 2016. The 11 full papers and 14 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers cover various topics such as integration of software engineering and user-centered design; HCI models and model-driven engineering; incorporating guidelines and principles for designing usable products in the development process; usability engineering; methods for user interface design; patterns in HCI and HCSE; software architectures for user interfaces; user interfaces for special environments; representations for design in the development process; working with iterative and agile process models in HCSE; social and organizational aspects in the software development lifecycle; human-centric software development tools; user profiles and mental models; user requirements and design constraints; and user experience and software design.

Interactive systems have largely evolved over the past years. Nowadays, different users can interact with systems on different devices and in different environments. The user interfaces (UIs) are expected to cope with such variety. Plastic UIs have the capacity to adapt to changes in their context of use while preserving usability. Such capability enhances UIs, however, it adds complexity on them. We propose an approach to verifying interactive systems considering this adaptation capability of the UIs. The approach applies two formal techniques: model checking, to the verification of properties over the system model, and equivalence checking, to compare different versions of a UI, thereby identifying different levels of UI equivalence. We apply the approach to a case study in the nuclear power plant domain in which several UI are analyzed, properties are verified, and the level of equivalence between them is demonstrated.

International audience; Socio-Technical Systems (STS) such as Air Traffic Management Systems (ATM) are considered as complex as they encompass interactions involving humans and machines deeply influenced by environmental aspects (e.g. weather conditions) and by the overall organizational structure in which they are deployed in. Within such STS, interactive systems are omnipresent allowing operators to interact with the underlying system. Such interactive systems must be both usable (i.e. enabling users to perform their tasks efficiently and effectively while ensuring a certain level of operator satisfaction) and resilient to adverse events including software malfunctions (e.g. automation degradation) as well as interaction related problems (e.g. human errors or interactive system failures). Current techniques, methods and tools do not allow to model STSs as a whole and thus to analyze both usability and resilience properties. This paper proposes a multi-models based approach for the modelling and the analysis of partly-autonomous interactive systems for assessing their resilience and usability. The approach integrates 3 modelling techniques: Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) (focused on organizational functions), Human-centered Assessment and Modelling to Support Task Engineering for Resilient Systems (HAMSTERS) (centered on human goals and activities) and Interactive Cooperative Objects (ICO) (dedicated to the modelling of interactive systems). The principles of the multi-models approach is illustrated on an example for carefully showing the extensions proposed to the selected modelling techniques and how they integrate together. A case study dealing with aircraft route change due to bad weather conditions demonstrates the scalability and benefits of the approach.

International audience; Formal methods provide support for validation and verification of interactive systems by means of complete and unambiguous description of the envisioned system. They can also be used (for instance in the requirements/needs identification phase) to define precisely what the system should do and how it should meet user needs. If the entire development process in supported by formal methods (for instance as required by DO 178C [7] and its supplement 333 [8]) then classical formal method engineers would argue that the resulting software is defect free. However, events that are beyond the envelope of the specification may occur and trigger unexpected behaviors from the formally specified system resulting in failures. Sources of such failures can be permanent or transient hardware failures, due to (when such systems are deployed in the high atmosphere e.g. aircrafts or spacecrafts) natural faults triggered by alpha-particles from radioactive contaminants in the chips or neutron from cosmic radiation. This position paper proposes a complementary view to formal approaches first by presenting an overview of causes of unexpected events on the system side as well as on the human side and then by discussing approaches that could provide support for taking into account system faults and human errors at design time.

International audience; The audio-feedback resulting from object interaction provides information about the material of the surface and about one's own motor behavior. With the current developments in interactive sonification, it is now possible to digitally change this audio-feedback, and thus, the use of interactive sonification becomes a compelling approach to shape tactile surface interactions. Here, we present a prototype for a sonic interactive surface, capable of delivering surface tapping sounds in real-time, when triggered by the users' taps on a real surface or on an imagined, "virtual" surface. In this system, the delivered audio-feedback can be varied so that the heard tapping sounds correspond to different applied strength during tapping. Here, we also propose a multi-dimensional measurement approach to evaluate user experiences of multi-modal interactive systems. We evaluated our system by looking at the effect of the altered tapping sounds on emotional action-related responses, users' way of interacting with the surface, and perceived surface hardness. Results show the influence of the sonification of tapping at all levels: emotional, behavioral and perceptual. These results have implications in the design of interactive sonification displays and tangible auditory interfaces aiming to change perceived and subsequent motor behaviour, as well as perceived material properties.

Task models are a very powerful artefact describing users’ goals and users’ activities and contain numerous information extremely useful for designing usable interactive applications. Indeed, task models is one of the very few means for ensuring effectiveness of the application i. e. that the application allows users to reach their goals and perform their tasks. This paper presents a tool-supported framework for exploiting task models throughout the development process and even when the interactive application is deployed and used. To this end, we introduce a framework for connecting task models to an existing, executable, interactive application. The main contribution of the paper lies in the definition of a systematic correspondence between the user interface elements of the interactive application and the low level tasks in the task model. Depending on the fact that the code of the application is available or not, the fact that the application has been prepared at programming time for such integration or not, we propose different alternatives to perform such correspondence (in a toolsupported way). This task-application integration allows the exploitation of task models at run time bringing in the benefits listed above to any interactive application. The approach, the tools and the integration are presented on a case study of a Flight Control Unit (FCU) used in aircraft cockpits. This paper extends the article entitled ‘A Generic Tool-Supported Framework for Coupling Task Models and Interactive Applications’ which have been presented at the 7th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS 2015). In this expanded version, the detailed description of the correspondence between annotations in the program of the interactive application and interactive tasks in the task models has been added. The complete version of the case study has also been integrated so that the application of each step of the proposed validation process is presented.

We present a general software architecture to carry out interactive molecular simulations in a game engine environment. Our implementation is based on the UnityMol framework and the HireRNA physics engine. With UnityMol, we pursue the goal to create an interactive virtual laboratory enabling researchers in biology to visualize biomolecular systems, run simulations and interact with physical models and data. Similarly, UnityMol enables game designers to build scientifically accurate molecular scenarios. We discuss four case studies, from simulation setup via immersive experiments, force-induced unfolding of RNA to teaching and collaborative research applications. Visual effects enrich the dynamic and immersive aspects. We combine an appealing visual feedback with a set of analysis features to extract information about properties of the fascinating biomolecular systems under study. Access to various input devices enables a natural interaction with the simulation.

International audience; The deployment of higher interactivity in avionic digital cockpits for critical applications is a challenge today both in terms of software engineering and fault-tolerance. The dependability of the user interface and its related supporting software must be consistent with the criticality of the functions to be controlled. The approach proposed in this paper combines fault prevention and fault-tolerance techniques to address this challenge. Following the ARINC 661 standard, a model-based development of interactive objects (namely widgets and layers) aims at providing zero-defect software. Regarding remaining software faults in the underlying runtime support and also physical faults, the approach is based on fault tolerance design patterns, like self-checking components and replication techniques. The proposed solution relies on the space and time partitioning provided by the executive support following the ARINC 653 standard. Defining and designing resilient interactive cockpits is a necessity in the near future as these command and control systems provide a great opportunity to improve maintenance, evolvability and usability of avionic systems.

International audience; The evaluation of the interactive systems has been the subject of numerous researches during the last two decades. However, it still remains a difficult task to establish. Generally, evaluators exploit a single method to proceed to an interactive system evaluation. However, many authors assert that a single method is not enough to obtain relevant evaluation results. As a solution, we propose a decision-making approach for the synthesis of data collected by different evaluation methods to obtain more reliable evaluation results. The proposed approach is based on three evaluation methods: the questionnaire, the ergonomic quality inspection and the electronic informer. As an evaluation result, the proposed approach provides evaluators with the quantification of the evaluation dimensions: the usability and the system functionality degree.

cote interne IRCAM: Boyer13b; None / None; National audience; We report on an experiment designed to evaluate sensorimo- tor adaptation in a motion-based sound synthesis system. We propose to investigate a sound-oriented task, namely to reproduce a targeted sound. The system is a small handheld object whose motion drives a sound syn- thesizer. In particular, the angular velocity is captured in real-time by a gyroscope and transmitted wirelessly to the sound engine. The targeted sound is obtained when the motion matches a given reference velocity profile. If the velocity profile is performed with sufficient accuracy, a specific sound is heard, while a incorrect velocity profile produces either noisier sound or sound with a louder high harmonic (depending on lower or higher velocity values). The results show that subjects are generally able to learn to reproduce the target sound. Motor adaptation is also found to occur, at various degrees, in most subjects when the profile is altered.

International audience; The analytical methods based on evaluation models of interactive systems were proposed as an alternative to user testing in the last stages of the software development due to its costs. However, the use of isolated behavioral models of the system limits the results of the analytical methods. An example of these limitations relates to the fact that they are unable to identify implementation issues that will impact on usability. With the introduction of model-based testing we are enable to test if the implemented software meets the specified model. This paper presents an model-based approach for test cases generation from the static analysis of source code.

International audience; The evaluation of interactive systems has been an active subject of research for many years. Many methods have been proposed, but most of them do not take the architectural specificities of an agent-based interactive system into account, nor do they focus on the link between architecture and evaluation. In this paper, we present an agent-based architecture model for interactive systems. Then, based on this architecture, we propose a generic, reconfigurable evaluation environment, called EISEval, designed and developed to help evaluators analyze and evaluate certain aspects of interactive systems in general and of agent-based architecture interactive systems in particular: User Interface (UI), non-functional properties (e.g., response time, complexity) and user characteristics (e.g., abilities, preferences, progress). System designers can draw useful conclusions from the evaluation results to improve the system. This environment was applied to evaluate an agent-based interactive system used to supervise an urban transport network in a study organized in laboratory

The quality evaluation topic of human computer interfaces is increasingly attracting researchers' attention in the information system community. The quality subjective assessment of the interactive systems interfaces using the advanced technology is an important issue which merits attention from researchers. In order to increase the overall satisfaction of users, questionnaire tool is used as one of the main techniques dedicated to aid evaluators to measure users' perceived qualities. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the quality subjective assessment by defining a conceptual specification for a new automatic questionnaire generating tool able to collect, analyze and criticize the users' views. The developed questionnaire tool will be used in the context of evaluation of traffic supervision system in Valenciennes (France). The main contribution is to propose a web generation questionnaire environment to provide a subjective evaluation for the interactive systems interfaces. It includes the proposed questionnaire model and describes the applied subjective evaluation process based on ISO 14598 norms.

International audience; Eye gaze is now used as a content adaptation trigger in interactive media applications, such as customized advertisement in video, and bit allocation in streaming video based on region-of-interest (ROI). The reaction time of a gaze-based networked system, however, is lower-bounded by the network round trip time (RTT). Furthermore, only low-sampling-rate gaze data is available when commonly available webcam is employed for gaze tracking. To realize responsive adaptation of media content even under non-negligible RTT and using common low-cost webcams, we propose a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based gaze-prediction system that utilizes the visual saliency of the content being viewed. Specifically, our HMM has two states corresponding to two of human's intrinsic gaze behavioral movements, and its model parameters are derived offline via analysis of each video's visual saliency maps. Due to the strong prior of likely gaze locations offered by saliency information, accurate runtime gaze prediction is possible even under large RTT and using common webcam. We demonstrate the applicability of our low-cost gaze prediction system by focusing on ROI-based bit allocation for networked video streaming. To reduce transmission rate of a video stream without degrading viewer's perceived visual quality, we allocate more bits to encode the viewer's current spatial ROI, while devoting fewer bits in other spatial regions. The challenge lies in overcoming the delay between the time a viewer's ROI is detected by gaze tracking, to the time the effected video is encoded, delivered and displayed at the viewer's terminal. To this end, we use our proposed low-cost gaze prediction system to predict future eye gaze locations, so that optimized bit allocation can be performed for future frames. Through extensive subjective testing, we show that bit-rate can be reduced by up to 29\% without noticeable visual quality degradation when RTT is as high as 200 ms.

International audience; The purpose of ARINC 661 specification is to define interfaces to a Cockpit Display System (CDS) which is used in many types of aircrafts cockpits such as A380 from Airbus, B787 from Boeing or Falcon 2000D from Dassault Aviation. ARINC 661 provides precise information for communication protocol between application (called User Applications) and user interface elementary components (called widgets). It also provides a detailed description of the widgets themselves (attributes, events …). However, in ARINC 661, very little information is given about the behaviour of these widgets and about the behaviour of an application made up of a set of such widgets. This paper presents a quick overview of the formal description technique called Interactive Cooperative Objects (ICOs) and its application for modelling the various elements of ARINC 661 specification. This formal description technique defines (in a precise and non-ambiguous way) all the elements of an interactive application compliant with ARINC 661 specification and especially their behavioural aspects which is definitively overlooked in the standard. The application of the formal description technique is shown on an interactive application to be used in an interactive cockpit. This application supports pilots' activities while cooperating with Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) using a Data-Link (DL) communication technology. Such communication must follow a predefined protocol called CPDLC (Control-Pilot Data Link Communication). Using this application as a case study, we present how ICOs are used for modelling Interactive Widgets, User Applications and User Interface servers (in the ARINC 661 specification context). Lastly, we present briefly how such models can be exploited for verification and validation purposes of interactive cockpits applications.

International audience; The amount of images contained in repositories or available on Internet has exploded over the last years. In order to retrieve efficiently one or several images in a database, the development of Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems has become an intensively active research area. However, most proposed systems are keyword-based and few imply the end-user during the search (through relevance feedback). Visual low-level descriptors are then substituted to keywords but there is a gap between visual description and user expectations. We propose a new framework which combines a multi-objective interactive genetic algorithm, allowing a trade-off between image features and user evaluations, and a support vector machine to learn the user relevance feedback. We test our system on SIMPLIcity database, commonly used in the literature to evaluate CBIR systems using a genetic algorithm, and it outperforms the recent frameworks.

International audience; In the last few years, glass cockpits are being replaced by interactive cockpits to provide a higher level of integration of both command and information display. Due to their event driven nature, interactive systems offer more display and control capabilities but they require specific error detection and fault tolerance techniques to reach a high level of dependability. This paper proposes a model-based approach for adding fault tolerance mechanisms to interactive cockpits. While several mechanisms are considered and presented, the contribution is focused on the formal description of self-checking widgets, being the basis for interactive cockpits.

In this thesis we consider the problem of information hiding in the scenarios of interactive systems, statistical disclosure control, and refinement of specifications. We apply quantitative approaches to information flow in the first two cases, and we propose improvements for the usual solutions based on process equivalences for the third case. In the first scenario we consider the problem of defining the information leakage in interactive systems where secrets and observables can alternate during the computation and influence each other. We show that the information-theoretic approach which interprets such systems as (simple) noisy channels is not valid. The principle can be recovered, however, if we consider channels of a more complicated kind, that in information theory are known as channels with memory and feedback. We show that there is a complete correspondence between interactive systems and these channels, and we propose the use of directed information from input to output as the real measure of leakage in interactive systems. We also show that our model is a proper extension of the classical one, i.e. in the absence of interactivity the model of channels with memory and feedback collapses into the model of memoryless channels without feedback. In the second scenario we consider the problem of statistical disclosure control, which concerns how to reveal accurate statistics about a set of respondents while preserving the privacy of individuals. We focus on the concept of differential privacy, a notion that has become very popular in the database community. Roughly, the idea is that a randomized query mechanism provides sufficient privacy protection if the ratio between the probabilities that two adjacent datasets give a certain answer is bound by a constant. We observe the similarity of this goal with the main concern in the field of information flow, namely limiting the possibility of inferring the secret information from the observables. We show how to model the query system in terms of an information-theoretic channel, and we compare the notion of differential privacy with that of min-entropy leakage. We show that differential privacy implies a bound on the min-entropy leakage, and we also consider the utility of the randomization mechanism, which represents how close the randomized answers are, in average, to the real ones. Finally we show that the notion of differential privacy implies a tight bound on utility, and we propose a method that under certain conditions builds an optimal randomization mechanism. Moving the focus away from quantitative approaches, in the third scenario we address the problem of using process equivalences to characterize information-hiding properties (for instance secrecy, anonymity and non-interference). In the literature, some works have used this approach, based on the principle that a protocol P with a variable x satisfies such property if and only if, for every pair of secrets s1 and s2, P[s1 / x] is equivalent to P[s2 / x]. We show that, in the presence of nondeterminism, the above principle may rely on the assumption that the scheduler "works for the benefit of the protocol", and this is usually not a safe assumption. Non-safe equivalences, in this sense, include complete-trace equivalence and bisimulation. This problem arises naturally when refining a specification into an implementation, since usually the former is more abstract than the latter, and the refinement process involves reducing the nondeterminism. The scheduler is, in this sense, a final product of the refinement process, after all the nondeterminism is ruled out. We present a formalism in which we can specify admissible schedulers and, correspondingly, safe versions of complete-trace equivalence and bisimulation. We prove that safe bisimulation is still a congruence. Finally, we show that safe equivalences can be used to establish information-hiding properties.; Cette thèse traite des mesures des flux d'information dans les systèmes informatiques. Nous exploitons les similarités entre des différents scénarios où la sécurité est une préoccupation, et nous appliquons les concepts de la théorie de l'information pour évaluer le niveau de protection offerte. Dans le premier scénario, nous considérons le problème de la définition des fuites d'information dans les systèmes interactifs où les éléments secrets et les éléments observables peuvent s'alterner au cours du calcul. Nous montrons que l'approche classique de la théorie de l'information qui interprète des systèmes tels que des canaux bruités (simples) n'est plus valide. Toutefois, le principe peut être récupéré si l'on considère les canaux d'un type plus compliqué, que, dans Théorie de l'information sont connus en tant que canaux avec mémoire et rétroaction. Nous montrons qu'il existe une correspondance parfaite entre les systèmes interactifs et ce type de canaux. Dans le deuxième scénario, nous considérons le problème de la vie privée dans les bases de données statistiques. Dans la communauté des bases de données, le concept de Differential Privacy est une notion qui est devenue très populaire. En gros, l'idée est qu'un mécanisme d'interrogation aléatoire assure la protection suffisante si le rapport entre les probabilités que deux ensembles de données adjacentes donnent la même réponse est lié par une constante. On observe la similarité de cet objectif avec la principale préoccupation dans le domaine des flux de l'information: limiter la possibilité de déduire les éléments secrets à partir des éléments observables. Nous montrons comment modéliser le système d'interrogation en termes d'un canal d'information-théorique, et l'on compare la notion de Differential Privacy avec le concept information mutuelle basé sur le travail de Smith. Nous montrons que Differential Privacy implique une borne sur l'information mutuelle, mais pas vice-versa. Nous avons également réfléchir à l'utilité du mécanisme de randomisation, ce qui représente la proximité entre les réponses aléatoires et les vraies, en moyenne. Nous montrons que la notion de Differential Privacy implique une borne serrée sur l'utilité, et nous proposons une méthode qui, sous certaines conditions, construit un mécanisme de randomisation optimale. Déménagent de l'accent mis sur des approches quantitatives, nous abordons le problème de l'utilisation des équivalences des processus pour caractériser des propriétés de protection d'information. Dans la littérature, certains travaux ont utilisé cette approche, fondée sur le principe selon lequel un protocole P avec une variable x satisfait de ces biens si et seulement si, pour chaque paire de secrets s1 et s2, P [s1 / x] est équivalent à P [s2 / x]. Nous montrons que, en présence de non-déterminisme, le principe ci-dessus repose sur l'hypothèse que le scheduler "travaille pour le bénéfice du protocole", et ce n'est généralement pas une hypothèse valable. Parmi des équivalences non-secoures, en ce sens, il y a l'équivalence des traces complètes et la bisimulation. Nous présentons un formalisme dans lequel on peut spécifier schedulers valides et, en conséquence, des versions sécurité des équivalences sur dessus. Nous montrons que notre version de bisimulation est toujours une congruence. Enfin, nous montrons que nos équivalences de sécurité peuvent être utilisées pour établir les propriétés de protection d'information.

In the main stream literature, management control systems are often considered to be used to implement new strategies. Nevertheless more and more scholars tend to point out that MCS are also able to allow the emergence of new strategies. Our case study shows that middle managers have the possibility to use management control systems to promote some of their interests even if they are in contradiction with the strategy promoted by the top managers. They are then able to modify this strategy., Dans la vision classique, les outils de contrôle de gestion servent à mettre en oeuvre la stratégie. Pourtant de plus en plus de recherches remettent en cause ce modèle et tendent à montrer que ces mêmes outils de contrôle peuvent aussi faire émerger des nouvelles stratégies. Notre étude de cas montre que, malgré un contrôle serré mis en place pour mettre en oeuvre une nouvelle stratégie, les cadres intermédiaires ont la possibilité d'utiliser ces mêmes systèmes de contrôle pour promouvoir certains de leurs intérêts en contradiction avec la stratégie prônée par la direction et parviennent ainsi à infléchir la stratégie.

In the last years User Interface Description Languages (UIDL) such as UsiXML appeared as a suitable solution for developing interactive systems. So far, there have been several attempts for exploring the potential of UsiXML as a language for describing user interface components for multi-target platforms. In this paper we are concerned by the behavioural aspect of interactive system built using UsiXML. In order to implement reliable and efficient applications, we propose to employ a formal description technique called ICO (Interactive Cooperative Objects) that have been developed to cope with complex behaviours of interactive systems including event-based and multimodal interaction. Our approach offers a bridge between UsiXML descriptions of the user interfaces components and a robust technique for describing behaviour using ICO modelling. Beyond that, this paper highlights how it is possible to take advantage from the two approaches to make possible to provide a model-based approach for prototyping interactive systems. The approach is fully illustrated by a case study using the ARINC 661 specification for User Interface components embedded into interactive aircraft cockpits.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the concurrent features of asynchronous systems. A preliminary step is represented by the introduction of a non-interleaving extension of barbed equivalence. This notion is then exploited in order to prove thatconcurrency cannot be observedthrough asynchronous interactions, i.e., that the interleaving and concurrent versions of a suitable asynchronous weak equivalence actually coincide. The theory is validated on some case studies, related to nominal calculi (π-calculus) and visual specification formalisms (Petri nets). Additionally, we prove that a class of systems which is deemed (output-buffered) asynchronous, according to a characterization that was previously proposed in the literature, falls into our theory.

The evaluation of interactive systems has been a very active subject of research since more than around thirty years. The appearance of agent-based interactive systems implies new problems relative to the evaluation of such systems. Our contribution is to propose a generic and configurable environment baptized EISEval (Environment for Interactive System Evaluation) to assist the evaluation of agent-based interactive systems. Indeed, it takes into account specificities of such systems and extend the possibilities of the traditional electronic informers to evaluate different aspects of a system: the user interface, some non-functional properties (for instance: response time) and certain user's properties. This environment has been validated by applying it in the SART project, to evaluate an interactive system in the field of transport called IAS (Information Assistance System) The research perspectives concern the evaluation and the improvement of the SAI system, and the improvement of the proposed evaluation environment to increase its automation and integrate it into an integrated environment. This environment would allow to combine evaluation results from various methods (including the proposed EISEval environment) to assist the evaluation of interactive systems. Keywords: Evaluation, human-computer interaction, user interface, interactive systems, agent-based architecture, software architecture, electronic informer.; L'évaluation des systèmes interactifs est un domaine de recherche très actif depuis plus d'une trentaine d'années. Suite à l'apparition de systèmes interactifs à architecture dite à base d'agents, de nouvelles problématiques relatives à l'évaluation de tels systèmes apparaissent. Notre contribution réside dans la proposition d'un environnement générique et configurable baptisé EISEval (Environment for Interactive System Evaluation) pour l'aide à leur évaluation. En effet, il prend en compte leurs spécificités et étend les possibilités des mouchards électroniques traditionnels pour évaluer différents aspects d'un système : l'interface utilisateur, quelques propriétés non fonctionnelles (ex. : temps de réponse) et certaines propriétés de l'utilisateur. Cet environnement a été testé et validé dans le cadre du projet SART (Système d'Aide à la Régulation de Trafic), dans un cadre d'évaluation d'un système interactif dans le domaine des transports appelé SAI (Système d'Aide à l'Information des voyageurs). Les perspectives de recherche concernent l'évaluation et l'amélioration du système SAI, de même que l'amélioration de l'environnement d'évaluation proposé, afin d'augmenter son automatisation et l'intégrer dans un environnement d'évaluation intégré. Cet environnement permettrait de combiner des résultats d'évaluation provenant de différentes méthodes (y compris de l'environnement EISEval) pour l'aide à l'évaluation des systèmes interactifs. Mots clés : Évaluation, Interaction Homme-Machine, interface utilisateur, systèmes interactifs, architecture à base d'agents, architecture logicielle, mouchard électronique.

The evaluation of interactive systems has been a very active subject of research since more than around thirty years. The appearance of agent-based interactive systems implies new problems relative to the evaluation of such systems. Our contribution is to propose a generic and configurable environment baptized EISEval (Environment for Interactive System Evaluation) to assist the evaluation of agent-based interactive systems. Indeed, it takes into account specificities of such systems and extend the possibilities of the traditional electronic informers to evaluate different aspects of a system: the user interface, some non-functional properties (for instance: response time) and certain user's properties. This environment has been validated by applying it in the SART project, to evaluate an interactive system in the field of transport called IAS (Information Assistance System) The research perspectives concern the evaluation and the improvement of the SAI system, and the improvement of the proposed evaluation environment to increase its automation and integrate it into an integrated environment. This environment would allow to combine evaluation results from various methods (including the proposed EISEval environment) to assist the evaluation of interactive systems. Keywords: Evaluation, human-computer interaction, user interface, interactive systems, agent-based architecture, software architecture, electronic informer.; L'évaluation des systèmes interactifs est un domaine de recherche très actif depuis plus d'une trentaine d'années. Suite à l'apparition de systèmes interactifs à architecture dite à base d'agents, de nouvelles problématiques relatives à l'évaluation de tels systèmes apparaissent. Notre contribution réside dans la proposition d'un environnement générique et configurable baptisé EISEval (Environment for Interactive System Evaluation) pour l'aide à leur évaluation. En effet, il prend en compte leurs spécificités et étend les possibilités des mouchards électroniques traditionnels pour évaluer différents aspects d'un système : l'interface utilisateur, quelques propriétés non fonctionnelles (ex. : temps de réponse) et certaines propriétés de l'utilisateur. Cet environnement a été testé et validé dans le cadre du projet SART (Système d'Aide à la Régulation de Trafic), dans un cadre d'évaluation d'un système interactif dans le domaine des transports appelé SAI (Système d'Aide à l'Information des voyageurs). Les perspectives de recherche concernent l'évaluation et l'amélioration du système SAI, de même que l'amélioration de l'environnement d'évaluation proposé, afin d'augmenter son automatisation et l'intégrer dans un environnement d'évaluation intégré. Cet environnement permettrait de combiner des résultats d'évaluation provenant de différentes méthodes (y compris de l'environnement EISEval) pour l'aide à l'évaluation des systèmes interactifs. Mots clés : Évaluation, Interaction Homme-Machine, interface utilisateur, systèmes interactifs, architecture à base d'agents, architecture logicielle, mouchard électronique.

Poster; Machine learning methods such as reinforcement learning applied to dialogue strategy optimization has become a leading subject of researches since the mid 90's. Indeed, the great variability of factors to take into account makes the design of a spoken dialogue system a tailoring task and reusability of previous work is very difficult. Yet, techniques such as reinforcement learning are very demanding in training data while obtaining a substantial amount of data in the particular case of spoken dialogues is time-consuming and therefore expansive. In order to expand existing data sets, dialogue simulation techniques are becoming a standard solution. In this paper, we present a user model for realistic spoken dialogue simulation and a method for using this model so as to simulate the grounding process. This allows including grounding subdialogues as actions in the reinforcement learning process and learning adapted strategy

This thesis presents a contribution to the evaluation of interactive systems based on oriented agent architecture. The appearance of new agent based architectures and systems provide new problems concerning the evaluation of agent based interactive systems. So, our work aims at the proposal of a principle that couples agent-based architecture of interactive systems and their evaluation. Based on this principle, we propose an evaluation aid system based on an electronic informer which allows us to acquire and analyse human-machine interactions in agent-based interactive environments. This electronic informer is used in the framework of the SART (Système d'Aide à la Régulation de Trafic) project in order to evaluate an Information System. This system was validated by a first evaluation in laboratory. The perspectives of this work aim mainly the improvement of the evaluation aid system and the evaluation of the Information System in a real work case.; Ce mémoire présente une contribution à l'évaluation des systèmes interactifs basés sur des architectures orientées agents. Avec l'apparition de nouvelles architectures et de nouveaux systèmes à base d'agents, de nouvelles problématiques d'évaluation des systèmes interactifs orientés agents apparaissent. Notre contribution consiste à proposer un principe de couplage entre une architecture à base d'agents du système interactif et son évaluation. En se basant sur ce principe, un système d'aide à l'évaluation basé sur un mouchard électronique baptisé MESIA (Mouchard électronique pour l'Evaluation des Systèmes interactifs Orientés Agent) a été proposé. Nous avons utilisé ce mouchard, dans le cadre du projet SART (Système d'Aide à la Régulation de Trafic), pour évaluer un Système d'Aide à l'Information des voyageurs (SAI). Une première évaluation a permis de valider globalement la maquette proposée. Les perspectives de recherche, visant en particulier à améliorer le système d'aide à l'évaluation proposé et à effectuer une évaluation dans un cadre réel de fonctionnement du SAI, terminent ce mémoire de cette thèse.

International audience; This paper presents an architecture for agent based interactive systems as well as an evaluation method adapted to such an architecture. In order to position the proposed architecture, the current state of the art concerning architectures used for traditional interactive systems is presented, along with that for agent-based interactive systems. The advantages and drawbacks of these architectures are discussed. There are two main types of architecture: those with functional components and those with structural components. In this article, the proposed agent-oriented architecture is considered as being mixed (it is both functional and structural). It creates a separation into three functional components, respectively known as: the interface with the application, the dialogue controller and the presentation. By using this architecture as a basis, we propose an evaluation tool called "electronic informer" which allow us to obtain and analyse the human-machine interactions in agent-based environments. This electronic informer is made up of several informer agents taken from the evaluation of the system architecture and more particularly from the multi-agent presentation system. It is based essentially on the acquisition of data coming from the evaluated global system.

International audience; In this paper parallelepipeds and their use in camera calibration and 3D reconstruction processes are studied. Parallelepipeds naturally characterize rigidity constraints present in a scene, such as parallelism and orthogonality. A subclass of parallelepipeds-the cuboids-has been frequently used over the past to partially calibrate cameras. However, the full potential of parallelepipeds, in camera calibration as well as in scene reconstruction, has never been clearly established. We propose a new framework for the use of parallelepipeds which is based on an extensive study of this potential. In particular, we exhibit the complete duality that exists between the intrinsic metric characteristics of a parallelepiped and the intrinsic parameters of a camera. Our framework allows to fully exploit parallelepipeds and thus overcomes several limitations of calibration approaches based on cuboids. To illustrate this framework, we present an original and very efficient interactive method for 3D reconstruction from single images. This method allows to quickly build a scene model from a single uncalibrated image.

International audience; In high-level hardware synthesis (HLS), there is a gap in the quality of the synthesized results between data-flow and control-flow dominated behavioral descriptions. Heuristics destined for the former usually perform poorly on the latter. To close this gap, the CODESIS interactive HLS tool relies on a unifying intermediate design representation and adapted heuristics that are able to accommodate both types of designs, as well as designs of a mixed data-flow and control-flow nature. Preliminary experimental results in mutual exclusiveness detection and in efficiently scheduling conditional behaviors, are encouraging and prompt for more extensive experimentation.

Information retrieval systems aim at allowing a user to reach documents that contribute to solve the information problem that prompted the use of the system. The system can be viewed as a predictive apparatus, that predicts the relevance of documents for the user. To do this, systems generally rely on pieces of evidence that are of a topical nature, namely the set of keywords that can be obtained from the query entered by the user. The system implements thus a matching function that maps documents onto queries, and that models the topical dimension of relevance. Although, uses ans users of information retrieval systems are getting more varied, as well as information media that is not exclusively textual anymore. We draw two consequences from these evolutions. Firstly, the assumption that the topical relevance factor is paramount and as such, the only factor actually modelled in systems, does not hold anymore. Many other relevance factors are involved in information retrieval, that greatly influence systems performance in the context of a real-life use of a system. These factors strongly depend on the individual who performs the search, and on the situation in which the individual stands, and this fact requestions the traditional modelling of relevance as a normalizing topical matching between documents and queries. Secondly, the interactive nature of information retrieval system use, contributes to the definition of the user's situation, and as such, participates in the system's overall performance. A number of interactive features in systems are directly concerned with the modelling of relevance and with IR-specific matters -- viz. the number of retrieved documents that the user faces, the precision or exhaustivity of the result, etc. This thesis relies on user relevance studies to define a model for the design of system relevance that accounts for those relevance factors involved in the interactive use of systems, and for the need for adapting the matching function to the particular retrieval situation at hand. Hence, we define three user-oriented functional duties for information retrieval systems: allow for the detection of relevant documents retrieved, allow for the understanding and comprehending of the reasons for documents to be retrieved, and allow for the production of useful feedback for the iterative improvement of the query. The concept of relevance schema substitutes to the traditional query, to play the role of interfaces between the system relevance and the user. This relevance schema is comprised of two kinds of parameters that allow tuning the system in relation with the retrieval situation encountered: on the one hand, semantic parameters encompass the topical dimension together with other types of relevance criteria, and on the other hand, pragmatic parameters account for relevance factors related to the conditions in which the user achieves the interactive tasks required. We apply this design to an image retrieval application, with a multi-faceted indexing available that allow for the definition of relevance criteria that go beyond topical relevance criteria. We show via our prototype how the system can adapt to situations occurring during a retrieval session., Les systèmes de recherche d'information ont pour fonction de permettre à l'utilisateur d'accéder à des documents qui contribuent à résoudre le problème d'information qui motive sa recherche. Ainsi le système peut être vu comme un instrument de prédiction de la pertinence des documents du corpus pour l'utilisateur. Les indices traditionnellement utilisés par le système pour estimer cette pertinence sont de nature thématique, et sont fournis par l'utilisateur sous la forme d'un ensemble de mots-clés : la requête. Le système implémente donc une fonction de correspondance entre documents et requête qui modélise la dimension thématique de la pertinence. Cependant l'éventail des utilisations et des utilisateurs des systèmes va s'élargissant, de même que la nature des documents présents dans les corpus, qui ne sont plus seulement des documents textuels. Nous tirons deux conséquences de cette évolution. D'une part, l'hypothèse que le facteur thématique de pertinence est prépondérant (et donc seul sujet à modélisation dans les systèmes), ne tient plus. Les autres facteurs, nombreux, de la pertinence interviennent d'une manière telle qu'ils compromettent les performances des systèmes dans le contexte d'une utilisation réelle. Ces autres facteurs dépendent fortement de l'individu et de sa situation de recherche d'information, ce qui remet en cause la conception de la pertinence système comme une fonction de correspondance qui ne prend en compte que les facteurs de la pertinence qui ne dépendent pas de l'utilisateur. D'autre part, la nature de l'utilisation interactive du système contribue à définir la situation de recherche de l'utilisateur, et en cela participe aux performances du système de recherche d'information. Un certain nombre de caractéristiques de l'interaction sont directement liées à la modélisation de la pertinence système et à des préoccupations spécifiques à la problématique de la recherche d'information. Notre thèse s'appuie sur les travaux réalisés sur les facteurs de la pertinence pour un individu, pour définir un modèle de conception de la pertinence système qui prend en compte les facteurs qui relèvent de l'utilisation interactive du système et de la nécessité d'adaptation de la fonction de correspondance à la situation de recherche particulière dans laquelle l'utilisateur se trouve. Ainsi, nous définissons trois nouvelles fonctions du système de recherche d'information, en termes d'utilisation du système : permettre la détection de la pertinence des documents retrouvés, permettre la compréhension des raisons de leur pertinence système, et permettre de procéder à une reformulation du problème d'information dans le cadre d'un processus itératif de recherche. La notion de schéma de pertinence se substitue à celle de requête, en tant qu'interface entre la pertinence système et l'utilisateur. Ce schéma de pertinence intègre deux types de paramètres permettant l'adaptation du système à la situation de recherche : d'une part les paramètres sémantiques, qui recouvrent non seulement la dimension thématique de la pertinence mais aussi d'autres critères de pertinence liés aux caractéristiques indexées des documents, et d'autre part les paramètres pragmatiques qui prennent en compte les facteurs de la pertinence liés aux conditions dans lesquelles l'utilisateur réalise les tâches qui lui incombent dans l'interaction. Nous appliquons ce modèle de conception de la pertinence système dans le cadre d'une application de recherche d'images, dont le corpus est indexé de façon à couvrir plusieurs dimensions de la pertinence outre la dimension thématique. Notre prototype nous permet de montrer comment le système s'adapte en fonction des situations qui se présentent au cours d'une session de recherche.