Esperança Amengual Alcover

University of the Balearic Islands | UIB · Department of Mathematic and Computer Sciences

In this paper an ongoing work whose goal is to develop an educational serious game for type 1 diabetes (T1D) is introduced. A serious game is a video game that has been designed with a main purpose that goes beyond entertainment. The ultimate goal of a serious game is to help users to reach their objective in a playful way through the game. Initial...

Emotion and facial expression recognition are a common topic in artificial intelligence. In particular, main efforts focus on constructing models to classify within the six universal emotions. In this paper, we present the first attempt to classify within 33 different facial expressions. We define and train a simple convolutional neural network wit...

It is well-known that lighting conditions have an important influence on the automatic recognition of human expressions. Although the impact of lighting on the perception of emotions has been studied in different works, databases of facial expressions do not consider intentional lighting. In this work, a new database of facial expressions performed...

After the COVID-19 pandemic the use of face masks has become a common practice in many situations. Partial occlusion of the face due to the use of masks poses new challenges for facial expression recognition because of the loss of significant facial information. Consequently, the identification and classification of facial expressions can be negati...

Recognizing facial expressions has been a persistent goal in the scientific community. Since the rise of artificial intelligence, convolutional neural networks (CNN) have become popular to recognize facial expressions, as images can be directly used as input. Current CNN models can achieve high recognition rates, but they give no clue about their r...

Facial expression classification requires large amounts of data to reflect the diversity of conditions in the real world. Public databases support research tasks providing researchers an appropriate work framework. However, often these databases do not focus on artistic creation. We developed an innovative facial expression dataset that can help bo...

At present, Internet of Things (IoT) is a relatively new and promising field where objects can be connected to the Internet and collaborate among them in an intelligent way. The technological potential of IoT demands improvements regarding personal data security and privacy. When connected objects are toys, that is in the Internet of Toys (IoToys)...

Many experiences have been applied with games in different areas of knowledge to obtain better results or to simply increase motivation or attract potential users. This is the case of the learning processes in the educational context, or in the rehabilitation of patients in the health context. Currently, there are new technologies that have allowed...

Serious game development for rehabilitation therapy is becoming increasingly popular because of the motivational advantages that these types of applications provide. Consequently, the need for a common process framework for this category of software development has become increasingly evident. The goal is to guarantee that products are developed an...

Electroencephalography (EEG) is an electrophysiological monitoring method to record the electrical activity of the brain in a not invasive manner, with low cost hardware, using wireless communication and with high temporal resolution. Serious Games (SG) have demonstrated their effectiveness as a therapeutic resource to deal with motor, sensory and...

The evolution of technologies has allowed that every day more and more games are available on our mobile devices. These games have evolved in many ways depending on their field of application. Thus, one of those kinds of games is pervasive games (PG). Each one of those fields has its own features and targets, which is the reason why researchers hav...

Resumen. En los últimos años el desarrollo de aplicaciones móviles ha ido ga-nando adeptos a gran velocidad debido a la popularidad que han adquirido los dispositivos móviles. El establecimiento de un marco de procesos adecuado para desarrollar este tipo de aplicaciones resulta vital a la hora de garantizar que los productos se desarrollan y se val...

Nowadays the development of serious games for rehabilitation therapy is gaining popularity thanks to the motivational advantages of this type of computer software. Consequently, the need for a process framework for the development of this category of software applications has become more evident. The final goal is to guarantee that these software p...

Usability is a key aspect in diverse courses in Computer Engineering Education. Although usability has been analysed and discussed in both Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction disciplines, there is still a need to provide a global view of usability between these two perspectives that have evolved separately. Aiming at emphasizing on...

El trabajo de Manresa-Yee, Amengual y Ponsa realiza una revisión sobre la metodología utilizada en evaluaciones de usabilidad de interfaces basadas en visión, que hacen uso de gestos para la comunicación entre el usuario y el sistema. El resultado es una descripción de los factores y métricas utilizadas para evaluar tres aspectos claves de la usabi...

Serious games have demonstrated their effectiveness as a therapeutic resource to deal with motor, sensory and cognitive disabilities. In this article we consider Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) as a new interaction mechanism that could be used in serious games to improve their rehabilitation activity thanks to the ability of BCI to stimulate the...

Serious games have demonstrated their effectiveness as a therapeutic resource to deal with motor, sensory and cognitive disabilities. In this article we consider Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) as a new interaction mechanism that could be used in serious games to improve their rehabilitation activity thanks to the ability of neurofeedback to stimul...

Vision-based interfaces can employ gestures to interact with aninteractive system without touching it. Gestures are frequently modelled in laboratories, and usability testing should be carried out. However, often these interfaces present usability issues, and the great diversity of uses of these interfaces and the applications where they are used,...

This paper describes a first-hand experience in Software Process Improvement within a Spanish Company which, since 2002, has been involved in an improvement programme led by our research group. We discuss the experience and the results of this improvement programme, as well as the lessons learned to deal with new future improvement initiatives in o...

ContextIn recent years, many software companies have considered Software Process Improvement (SPI) as essential for successful software development. These companies have also shown special interest in IT Service Management (ITSM). SPI standards have evolved to incorporate ITSM best practices.Objective This paper presents a systematic literature rev...

Software companies which have been involved in a process improvement programme according to ISO/IEC 15504 have already performed some steps in order to implement ISO/IEC 27000 as an information security management framework. After analysing in depth the existing relations between ISO/IEC 15504-5 base practices and ISO/IEC 27002 security controls, i...

As a consequence of the successful implementation of Quality Management Systems (QMS) according to ISO 9001 performed some years ago by an important number of organizations, nowadays when these companies decide to implement new standards, such as ISO/IEC 20000 to manage their services or ISO/IEC 27001 to manage information security, they have alrea...

This paper presents the experience of application of the ISO/IEC 15504 standard in eight software companies. Firstly, the objectives, the participants and the work plan are exposed. Secondly, the implementation of the project activities and its results are summarized. And finally, the cost of the implementation is detailed. The project which has al...

Software engineering is currently paying special attention to cooperative and human aspects of software development. Within this new socio-technical perspective of software engineering, teamwork appears to be a relevant topic. This paper presents a SPICE-based Teamwork Assessment Model for software teams. This model, named Team SPICE, is composed o...

In software development companies, as well as in any company, information must be adequately protected. Therefore, the implementation of information security standards has also become crucial in software organizations. Software companies involved in a process improvement initiative according to the ISO/IEC 15504 standard for process assessment and...

La productividad de los equipos es un factor crítico en los proyectos de software. Por tanto, la evaluación y la mejora del trabajo en equipo deberían considerarse aspectos importantes a tener en cuenta para asegurar el éxito en este tipo de proyectos. En este artículo se presenta una herramienta de soporte a la evaluación del trabajo en equipo en...

Interest in quality of service that providers of Information Technology services have shown has favoured the emergence of a new discipline: Information Technology Service Management. With the aim of focusing the attention not only on product development or service provision, but also on the relationship with customers, different initiatives have ap...

In modern organizations teamwork is considered a key factor for succeeding in business. A growing emphasis on team culture culminates with a great number of articles analyzing different aspects to improve teamwork practises. Since software development projects are normally team efforts, teamwork improvement in software organizations should also be...

El interés por el sector de las pymes se ha generalizado en todo el mundo y se pueden encontrar ya algunos trabajos que relatan la aplicación de actividades relacionadas con la mejora de los procesos de software a este tipo de empresas. En este artículo se debate en primer lugar sobre la coincidencia de las características de las grandes organizaci...