Pedro Almeida

University of Aveiro | UA · Department of Communication and Art

The experience of visitors in cultural spaces is not limited to the actual moments in that space. These institutions, like museums, seek to enrich the visitor’s experience not only during but also after the visit. Creating solutions to capture memories of the visits can be a way to extend the experience. Therefore, this paper reports on a proposal...

The performance of the natural language understanding (NLU) module is a key issue when developing a natural language interaction (NLI) system. For the NLU to perform in an accurate way, it must be trained to correctly understand a wide scope of users’ intentions and give (correct) answers. The interaction context must also be considered, meaning th...

With the development of new technologies, audio-visual (AV) content creators are looking for more immersive experiences, so a greater involvement of the viewer with the action and the narrative occur. Based on this vision, virtual reality (VR) is increasingly considered a tempting option for the world of entertainment. VR 360º AV content is beginni...

After finding the audiovisual preferences of teenagers about online videos and following a design-based research planning, a set of videos about natural sciences conceptswas produced. These videos were published onYouTube following a communication strategy with posts on social networks (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) in a 13 days period. On a gro...

The user experience can be evaluated in different ways, from a combination of approaches and techniques capable of collecting insights about a particular product or system. In the TV ecosystem research field, verifying how users react to new features is an essential step to the integration of functionalities able to enhance the user experience. Thi...

Technology can be designed to strengthen the participatory culture and giving a voice to people through User-Generated Content (UGC). Such practices may also influence the way we engage with places and communities. In this regard, we propose the conceptualization of an online platform to promote participation and preserve audiovisual records of sha...

The rise of enthusiasts in mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), benefiting from well-established benefits of consuming audiovisual content for autonomous learning, has proliferated during the last decade. Simultaneously, there is constant debate about how reliable digital evaluation systems are, and therefore, what are the best instruments/pra...

Following a design-based research planning and according to the preferences of teenagers, a set of videos about natural sciences concepts was produced. These videos were published on YouTube following a communication strategy with posts on satellite networks (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) for a 13 days period. On a group session, 8 teenagers eva...

Voice User Interfaces (VUI) are giving promising steps towards interaction scenarios based on natural language interpretation rather than simple voice commands. The adaptation of these systems for each usage context requires a deep training process of the Natural Language Understanding component with the support of human collaboration. Among the se...

Commonly, users’ attention is divided between multiple devices like the consumption of television content and the use of another device, such as smartphones. In this case, users tend to use mobile phones while ads are being advertised. The Smartly project aims to explore the potential o using multiple screens to enhance the TV experience by allowin...

A Internet é um motor indispensável para a democratização do consumo de conteúdos audiovisuais, com particular enfoque nos últimos anos para os conteúdos em formato de vídeo. Nesse sentido, diferentes plataformas, iniciativas e movimentos contribuem efetivamente para estimular a produção e disseminação de novos conteúdos, no contexto de uma Cultura...

The design of interaction models for Voice User Interfaces is changing. The increasing number of home assistants, mobile devices and televisions supporting natural language interaction that are transforming and introducing voice interaction in multiple home scenarios is leading to important changes in the design of its interaction models. In the TV...

The actual video consumption behaviors are blurring the traditional boundaries between linear and non-linear viewing, leveraged by On-demand and Over-the-Top (OTT) content offers. The Managed-Operated Networks (MON) adapted to this shift by providing flexibility to content access via Catch-up and Time-shift TV services. In addition, manufacturers o...

In a Natural Language Interaction (NLI) solution, the efficiency of the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) component is a key issue. Considering this, the paper presents an analysis of the performance of three ASR systems on several noise scenarios resembling the interaction with the TV in a domestic environment. The evaluation setup resorted to co...

Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly a tempting option for creators seeking more immersive VR audiovisual experiences. In the suspense genre, VR promises to deliver a more impactful experience to the viewers. Nevertheless, it’s needed to confirm if such promise is real. This study focused on the creation of a suspense genre content to understand th...

Given the continuous transformation of the video consumption across multiple devices, this chapter has the main goal of characterizing the viewer behaviors at home, including the motivations for specific interactive television (iTV) features. An online survey was conducted with the aim of clarifying if the consumption patterns at home are contribut...

This article presents graphic and interaction guidelines for User Interface (UI) design in the Interactive TV domain (iTV). Starting with a systematization of principles and good practices based on pervasive examples, namely the Google Material Design guidelines for Android TV and guidelines for Apple tvOS, the UI design of the UltraTV system follo...

Viewers post a lot of TV program-related information on social networks while they are watching TV, especially during its key moments. Therefore, this social buzz has the potential to be used as an automatic editorial criterion. Having this premise in consideration, this paper reports on the nowUP solution, a service developed with the main goal of...

Changes in the viewer’s habits, such as getting linear and nonlinear content, anytime and anywhere, are reshaping the behaviors of watching TV. In this context, many commercial stakeholders, of both Managed Operated Networks (MON) and Over-the-Top solutions (OTT), have been offering new content unification features supported by innovative user inte...

This paper addresses an iTV prototype able to offer contents from different sources over a unique and common user interface. The prototype was developed under the UltraTV project, formed by a consortium that gathers the industry and the academy to develop a new digital entertainment approach to the iTV ecosystem. The high-fidelity prototype runs on...

Globalmente assiste-se a um crescimento do número de horas de consumo de conteúdos audiovisuais online e a um decréscimo do consumo de televisão linear (Ericsson ConsumerLab, 2016; Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), 2015). Apesar de a maioria dos estudos se debruçar sobre a população de idade superior a 16 anos, admite-se que o consumo online em...

The UltraTV project proposes a User Interface for the unification of content from different sources, combining TV programs and Over-the-top (OTT) videos, fostering the discovery at the same level. In this demo, the UltraTV high-fidelity prototype, implemented in a set-top box, is presented, along with its unification, recommendation and profiling f...

General population and particularly teenagers are increasingly using mobile devices for video consumption instead of the regular TV set. Considering that the top motivation for video consumption is to seek for entertainment, there is an opportunity to try to capture some of those moments for educational content enriched with some entertainment char...

In a context where audiovisual consumption habits are continually transforming, mostly driven by Video On Demand services, this paper has the main goal of characterizing the motivational factors and behaviors related with the uses of multiple devices at home. The report is sustained in the results of an online survey carried out in Portugal, aiming...

General population and particularly teenagers are increasingly using mobile devices for video consumption instead of the regular TV set. Considering that the top motivation for video consumption is to seek for entertainment, there is an opportunity to try to capture some of those moments for educational content enriched with some entertainment char...

Recent changes in TV viewers' consumption habits are pushing to a point where industry content providers and producers must create new technological solutions to retain customers. To cope with these, the UltraTV project consortium developed an iTV concept, with a focus on the unification of content from different sources. This brings together tradi...

The use of new technologies in the teaching and learning process , as the case of devices with the use of Augmented Reality, captures student and teacher's attention, creating the expectation that its use can provide the participants with new ways of interacting, new possibilities for collaboration and potentially an increase in motivation for lear...

This presentation was on the shortlist for "Best student paper", and it describes Phase 2 of my doctoral research project. In this Phase, an expert panel was gathered to validate a Matrix, provide feedback and suggest operationalization strategies to embody the Matriz into an Online Collaborative Platform.

Audiovisual content (AVC) consumption, namely in Online Collaborative Platforms (OCP), like YouTube©, has been growing, mostly for entertainment purposes. Additionally, AVC has been regularly used to support educational contexts, either in formal local scenarios or to support online courses. But educational practitioners lack a structured place to...

O presente artigo enquadra - se na problemática do consumo de vídeos, para páginas web visualizadas em terminais móveis. Neste sentido, procede - se a um estudo que procura analisar os modelos de produtos audiovisuais para os dispositivos móveis, de modo a identificar as características e peculiaridades inerentes ao medium.

One of the key components of the design and development process of a User Interface (UI) is the User Experience (UX) assessment. It guarantees that the product meets the users’ needs and provides the best interaction, while achieving usability goals and emotional reactions of motivation, arousal and dominance. In this scope, this paper describes th...

The Ultra TV project is a partnership that connects the research field and the industry to bring innovation to the iTV domain. Among its goals is the development of an interactive TV ecosystem with the most advanced services, integrating different sources of content in a same (user) interface. This project comes in a period of great transformation...

Currently, consumers watch TV in many different ways. This scenario arises from changes in the users’ habits and needs, such as accessing linear and nonlinear con- tent either on the TV set or on a second screen device, anytime and anywhere they wish to watch it. In this context, many commercial players have been offering new features supported on...

The challenges and opportunities that arise with the increase of older populations are drawing the attention of several sectors of society, as is the case of the technological segment. The development of technical solutions to improve seniors’ quality of life and promote their autonomous living is commonly found in the roadmap of research teams and...

Young people are strongly engaged with the activity of watching online videos, especially in social platforms like Youtube or Facebook. The most popular viewed genres include musical and other entertainment genres. Educational videos struggle to occupy a relevant place in the young viewing habits. Nevertheless, this amount of time spent watching on...

The growing success of second-screen devices is changing the way users relate and interact with the television bringing a new dimension to the TV ecosystem. Nevertheless, the specificities of mobile devices are creating numerous and significant challenges in the field of usability and user experience (UX). In addition, the evaluation of application...

Users post a lot of related TV information on social networks while they are watching TV, mostly in a connected way with the highlight moments of the TV shows. This paper reports on the nowUP project, targeted at the development of a service that automatically creates summaries of TV programs based on the buzz on social networks. The project premis...

This paper reports on a preliminary study of a research project that proposes a new integration between the activity generated in social networks and television programs. The research team aimed to develop a tool that automatically creates summaries of popular TV programs based on the buzz (peaks of Twitter status updates) on Twitter, and, therefor...

The study presented in this paper was conducted with the purpose of understanding the online video consumption routines of teenagers and to perceive the acceptance of the introduction of educational informal videos, namely about science topics, on those routines. Nowadays teenagers start using technologies since young age and in particular watching...

This chapter analyses a Portuguese HEI's first experience with blended learning. Focusing on the Master in Innovative Tourism Development currently being held at the Superior School of Technology and Management of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo, it presents the institutional background and rationale behind the course's implementation...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th Iberoamerican Conference on Applications and Usability of Interactive TV , jAUTI 2016, held in conjunction with the III International Congress on Information Engineering and Information Systems, in La Habana, Cuba, in November 2016. The 11 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and s...

Technological solutions, namely interactive television (iTV) applications, have a lot of potential to deliver adapted solutions to wider audiences or to specific groups of users. Elderly can be one of these groups but require a special attention by specialists due to their specificities. One of the central questions to develop pleasant and usable t...

The technologies that are being gradually introduced in educational contexts enable students to diversify the ways for knowledge building. However, the exploitation of new technologies in the classroom is always a challenge for all interveners in the educational process. The arrival of a new technology, as is the case of augmented reality devices,...

Viewers post a lot of related TV information on social networks while they are watching TV, mostly in a connected way with the highlight moments of the TV shows. This paper reports on the nowUP system, targeted at the development of a service that automatically creates summaries of TV programs based on the buzz on social networks. The system premis...

This paper reports on a study evaluating the value of a documentary as a key medium to communicate design research. We present information from the evaluation of a second screen application using video as well as a scientific paper, in order to assess how the efficacy and usefulness of using such a documentary for science communication is perceived...

Ageing is a global phenomenon that in the last decades has led to a significant inversion of the ageing pyramid in the developed societies. This fact has been introducing deep changes in societies leading to increase attention towards seniors' concerns and needs and has leverage the appearance of multiple gerontechnologies. In this context televisi...

The growing use of second-screen devices stresses the importance of finding a balance between engagement, distraction, and disturbance of its users, while simultaneously watching television. In this framework, this article reports on a study designed to analyze the efficiency, impact, and interference of different notification strategies aiming to...

Technological devices surrounding the television are changing, leading to changes in viewers’ habits and to the development of second-screen applications created to provide better TV viewing experiences. Used while watching television, the 2NDVISION application presented in this paper is able to identify – through audio-fingerprint – content being...

This chapter analyses a Portuguese HEI's first experience with blended learning. Focusing on the Master in Innovative Tourism Development currently being held at the Superior School of Technology and Management of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo, it presents the institutional background and rationale behind the course's implementation...

This chapter presents a comprehensive view of the main activities and findings of a research project entitled TRACER-Portuguese Public Higher Education Use of Communication Technologies, which focused on how the information about the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education Institutions can be collected, systematized, processed, and de...

With this article we intend to lengthen the understanding of Inquiry Based Science Education methodology in 1st and 2nd cycles of basic education using mobile devices, analyzing and discussing practical examples of its application. From the analysis and data crossing of case studies and their methodologies and main results, we concluded that mobile...

Technological devices surrounding the television are changing, leading to changes in viewers' habits and to the development of second-screen applications created to provide better TV viewing experiences. Used while watching television, the 2NDVISION application presented in this paper is able to identify – through audio-fingerprint – content being...

Assistimos a importantes transformações na forma de ver televisão, nos dispositivos utilizados e no tipo de conteúdo consumidos. O ecossistema televisivo é, agora, populado por segundos ecrãs, sejam eles tablets, portáteis ou smartphones. Relativamente aos conteúdos disponíveis e consumidos, mantem-se a tendência de conteúdos audiovisuais produzido...

Nowadays customers of Pay-TV operators have access to a huge offer of contents available from linear-TV, Catch-up TV and VoD services that may lead them to get lost when deciding what to watch on TV. In this saturated TV ecosystem, operators and academics are trying to find innovative and alternative solutions to the traditional EPGs, enabling user...

The actual trends in the TV ecosystem present considerable social, organisational and technological challenges in the value-chain of Pay-TV operators. Among these is the global increase in bandwidth, the shifting of the storage capacity in the cloud, and the affordability of traditional content providers when facing the competitiveness of OTT conte...

As technological devices surrounding the television are changing, so are viewers’ habits. When the interactive Television industry turns its focus to the development of second-screen applications, this paper reports on a study aiming to analyse the impact, on users, of notifications in second-screen scenarios. As part of the study, the research tea...

This paper presents the second screen application GUIDER that aims to offer an advanced way for users to discover and select a TV content to watch from unified sources (linear TV, Catch-up TV and VoD). For that it uses a set of filtering criteria and displays detailed information over an innovative user interface. The GUIDER was developed to be use...

This chapter presents a comprehensive view of the main activities and findings of a research project entitled TRACER-Portuguese Public Higher Education Use of Communication Technologies, which focused on how the information about the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education Institutions can be collected, systematized, processed, and de...

This research focuses on the study of the uses of TV and the potential for interactive TV services among the Indian users and operators. A survey and in-depth interviews were conducted as part of the study. The results show that TV, computer and mobile phone usage is high among the respondents. Concerning TV viewing habits, most do it in a collecti...

A small video showing 2BeOn - one of the first Social TV applications

In recent years Europe has faced important changes leading to an ageing population. This challenges the social policies and may raise difficulties in providing health and home care support to the entire elderly population, fostering related problems such as loneliness and mobility issues, especially in non-rural areas. These health and social probl...

This paper presents the development and evaluation cycle of an interactive television (iTV) prototype that aims to improve the way users discover and select their TV content, bearing in mind the cognitive model that the viewer typically uses in mindless zapping situations. The development of the iTV application was supported by a study of the habit...

O presente capítulo inicia-se com uma abordagem às soluções de tele-cuidados disponíveis no mercado português. Seguidamente, e atendendo à referida orientação do capítulo para sistemas baseados na televisão, realiza-se uma análise detalhada das soluções centradas neste dispositivo. A segunda parte do capítulo apresenta um sistema de tele-cuidados d...

The use of Communication Technologies (CTs) to support teaching and learning in higher education (HE) has emerged as a research topic worldwide. At the University of Aveiro (Portugal) the TRACER project began researching in 2011 the use of CTs to support teaching and learning practices in Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions (PPHEIs). Da...

We have been witnessing significant changes in the television ecosystem, particularly in terms of the any time any where concept, where an array of technological advances allow viewers to watch their programs without constraints from the TV programing guides, the viewing location and the type of viewing equipment. This temporal and geographical fle...

Atualmente, os telespetadores de serviços pagos de televisão têm uma oferta de conteúdos televisivos muito vasta. A somar ao elevado número de canais que a digitalização da transmissão permite, os operadores oferecem serviços de video-on-demand e, mais recentemente, de gravações automáticas, armazenadas na cloud, dos últimos 7 dias. Neste contexto...

This paper presents the main results of a study conducted in Portugal with the aim of identifying the current trends of the television ecosystem, with special relevance to understand the cognitive processes of viewers when selecting what to watch on TV. To this end, an online survey targeted mainly to young adults with mid to high academic degrees...

In this chapter, the authors present the on-going work of the iNeighbour TV research project that aims to promote health care and social interaction among senior citizens, their relatives, and caregivers. The TV set was the device chosen to mediate all the action, since it is a friendly device and one with which the elderly are used to interacting....