Hugo Nicolau, Técnico professor (DEI) and ITI/LARSyS researcher, is one of the authors of the work that recently won the “Best Paper Award” at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference on Human-Computer Interaction.
The award-winning work titled “Investigating the Tradeoffs of Everyday Text-Entry Collection Methods” focuses “on the ubiquity use of mobile devices as communication tools, in particular written communication”, explains the DEI professor. Examples of this are the use of e-mail, social networks or written messages. “Recently, there has been a lot of interest from the scientific community in reusing this type of data in various domains, e.g. the creation of more efficient keyboards, new word prediction algorithms, new authentication techniques on mobile phones, language study and the impact of technology-mediated communication, early detection of diseases – such as Parkinson, identification of factors associated with well-being such as stress, fatigue or alcohol consumption”, says professor Hugo Nicolau.
Despite its immense potential, “it is not yet clear what is the best procedure for writing data collection in a real context”, stresses the DEI professor. In this work, the researchers analyse how the use of different data collection methods affect users’ writing behaviour in their daily lives. “In addition, we provide a new data collection tool that ensures the privacy of users”, says the ITI/LARSyS researcher.
The results show that the way data is collected “has a significant impact on the dynamics of writing, that is, on the way we write, but also on the motivation and confidence in using applications that monitor our writing”, explains the author.
The paper is also authored by LASIGE researchers (André Rodrigues, André R.B. Santos, Diogo Branco and Tiago Guerreiro), Open Lab researchers (Jay Rainey, David Verweij, Jan David Smeddinck) and one Northumbria University researcher (Kyle Montague). Professor Hugo Nicolau shares that the team feels “highly flattered” with this recognition.
According to the ITI researcher “the potential of our work for impact in various scientific domains was crucial” to winning the award. “The results will have implications for future work in multiple domains, such as Cybersecurity, Linguistics, Health Sciences. They will also allow us to better understand some of the results of the last decade with regard to text analysis”, he adds. “The use of multidisciplinary methods that combine Computer Science and Sociology” and also “the work carried out in a real environment”, have also played a key role.
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference on Human-Computer Interaction and annually brings together researchers and practitioners from all over the world and from diverse cultures and backgrounds, who have as an overarching goal to make the world a better place with interactive digital technologies.
