DigiMedia – Digital Media and Interaction Research Centre, from Department of Comunication and Art (DeCA), hosts the event “Internet Day 2019” to celebrate the Internet day with the theme “Interaction Culture”.

The day’s schedule includes, during the morning – a talk by Jeffrey Bardzell Professor of Informatics and Director of the HCI/Design program in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University-Bloomington and a round table discussion comprised by Emília Duarte  (Assistant Professor of Ergonomics in Design at Universidade Europeia and Director of the research unit UNIDCOM), Heitor Alvelos (Professor of Design and New Media at the University of Porto and Director of ID+: Institute for Research in Design, Media and Culture – Universidade do Porto), Jorge Rosa (Assistant Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa) and  Licínio Roque (Assistant Professor at University of Coimbra and Senior Researcher at CISUC – Center for Informatics and Systems).

In the afternoon, project presentations will be made by students of the degree in New Communication Technologies and a debate with guest companies. Following that, a “speed dating” activity will be performed in order to promote connections between students and companies in Sciences and Comunications Tecnologies areas.

Admission is free, although registration is required for certain activities. Please follow the available link [1]

More information regarding the event can be found in the available link [2]

Schedule avilable at [ID_A2]

LOCATION

University of Aveiro – Department of Communication and Art –  CCCI Auditorium and connected open space

The 2nd CeNTER Seminar, with the theme “Territory and Innovation: Discourses and Practices”, will be held on April 3rd at 9:30 AM in the Academic Acts Room of the University of Aveiro. The event aims to promote debates about how the various areas involved in the project.

Three panels will be illustrated:

• Intelligent Territories (9h45);
• Tourism in low density areas: opportunities and challenges (11h30);
• Network communities: the role of digital in mediation? (14h).

The launch will be in charge of the keynote speaker Álvaro Domingues (University of Porto), at 15.15. The complete program can be known through the event’s website [1].

The participation in the event is open to all interested parties. However, it is necessary to be previously register on the CeNTER website [2].

DigiMedia researchers integrate one of the work packages of the CeNTER Program.

A 48-hour non-stop event to address the design and development of digital games will be held at the Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro. The Global Game Jam initiative occurs simultaneously in 108 countries and students, players, industry practitioners and hobbyists from all over the world will be challenged to push their creative boundaries and code. Registering is open until January 15th, 2019.

Beyond the GameJam, five game-related workshops will also take place in DeCA : 1. Game Programming in Unity3D [Programação de Jogos em Unity 3D] (lectured by Mário Vairinhos); 2. Introduction to Pygame [Introdução ao PyGame] (lectured by Diogo Gomes); 3. ‘I want to learn Unity’ : Introduction to Unity3D in practice [‘Quero aprender Unity’: Introdução ao Unity 3D na prática] (lectured by Tânia Ribeiro); 4. Character animation: from paper to screen [Animação de personagens: do papel ao ecrã] (lectured by Gonçalo Gomes); and 5. Developing ‘Visual Novels’ using Unity3D [Desenvolvimento de ‘Visual Novels’ em Unity3D] (lectured by Liliana Vale Costa).

To join this Global Game Jame, register in the following link: https://goo.gl/forms/rz4yizVCRmS40i8t2

Further information can be obtained by sending an email to : ggjua2019@gmail.com

Professor Joseph Straubhaar, from the University of Texas at Austin, while visiting Portugal, toke the opportunity to better know  the University of Aveiro and DigiMedia Research Centre.

DigiMedia research Centre guided Professor Joseph Straubhaar in to our Research Ecosystem (people, process, research results) fostering the connection for future collaborative work.

In addition, DigiMedia had the pleasure to receive Professor Vicente Gosciola. In this short visit, Professor Vicente Graciola lectured two open classes: “Audiovisual Volumetry: A new approach in the field of Audiovisual Communication” and “Transmedia production: beyond the mettre en scène e mise en scène”.

On november 22, the DigiMedia Research Centre and AlticeLabs (with the support of the American Corner at UA) celebrated the World Usability Day. An electrifying talk presented by Santosh Basapur – lecturer and planning coordinator for human factors and systems design at IIT Institute of Design in Chicago – capture the attention of the audience, in the morning.

In the afternoon, Santosh Basapur made a visit to Altice Labs. In an informal conversation, he discussed topics related to User Experience and Media, namely a more immersive experience with Television.

The talk “Role of usability in Systems Thinking” is available here.

The talk is promoted by a joint collaboration between DigiMedia and AlticeLabs (with the support of the American Corner at UA) towards the celebration of the World Usability Day. It will take place on the 22th of November, 9.30 a.m., in the main auditorium of the CCCI at the University of Aveiro.

The speaker is Santosh Basapur – lecturer and planning coordinator for human factors and systems design at IIT Institute of Design in Chicago.

Santosh shifted to academia after being a principal staff user experience researcher at Motorola Mobility’s (a Google company) Applied Research Center in Chicago for 10 years. His expertise is in using methods from various domains like HCI, human factors, social sciences and anthropology and applying them to UX research.

More information about Santosh Basapur: [1]

A public session to present the results of the UNLOVE project will take place next Friday, October 19^th. UNLOVE aimed at developing a digital game to promote awareness and prevent violence dating.

The session, in which the Secretary of State for Equality [1] will participate, will take place in the “Sala de Atos” of the Rectory building of the University of Aveiro and is scheduled to begin at 9:30 am.

More Information available at: [2];[3]

The talk ” Interaction Design for All: How to explore our sensory capabilities to promote accessibility” will take place on the 24^th of October, 3 p.m., in the “anfiteatro João Branco/DeCA”.

The speaker is Professor Tatiana Aires Tavares, from the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil who will be with us, at the University of Aveiro, during the next week.

This is an initiative of both the “E-Health & Wellbeing” and “Social iTV” Research groups, from the DigiMedia Research Centre – Digital Media and Interaction .

More information about Tatiana Aires Tavares [1]

The 97^th AlticeLabs Tech Day was held on the 19^th July under the theme “A new TV experience: UltraTV”, a consortium project that brings together Altice Labs, the University of Aveiro and the Telecommunications Institute, co-financed by Compete2020, Portugal2020 and the European Structural Funds and the European Investment Funds. This project aims to develop an ecosystem of interactive TV applications that allows, on the one hand, to support a TV service with the most advanced functionalities on the market and, on the other, to test new models of interaction.

At that session, Jorge Miguel Rosa, from the B2C Products and Services Department of Altice PT, presented the evolution of streaming content consumption since 2010, with a decrease in live and linear visualization and a substantial increase in catch up TV. Equally relevant in the analysis of the television consumption evolution are the Netflix and Youtube channels, which are responsible for the explosion of online videos and direct access to the consumer. At the same time, there is a substantial increase in viewing on mobile devices such as tablets, laptops, and smartphones. This new paradigm in television consumption gives users control of what they see, when they see and where they see. In this sense, the pay TV business model must be rethought.

In response to the above problem, a set of presentations / demonstrations with proposals to respond to new ways of consuming Interactive TV content was made.In this sense, Professor Jorge Ferraz de Abreu, senior researcher at DigiMedia – Digital Media and Interaction Research Center and full professor from the Communication and Art department (DeCA) of the University of Aveiro (UA) ,  presented a disruptive User Interface (UI) proposal, with unification of contents and interactions, that is able to take advantage of the different types of devices: TV, mobile and computer. This study led to a UX prototype with a field trial involving at least 20 families and lasting 20 days, and results can be viewed on the Ultra TV website.

The new habits of content consumption on demand also raise technological issues, such as the need to enable public access networks to provide content with the highest quality to the user, regardless of their context or location, using adaptive distribution mechanisms that work in an integrated way. Professor Susana Sargento of the Telecommunications Institute presented and demonstrated the approach taken by her team to respond to this challenge, which involves improving the Quality of Experience (QoE) through mechanisms for predicting user consumption, by the implementation of distributed caches and usage and prefectching, in a content-aware distributed architecture (Content-Aware Adaptation and Distributed Architecture)

At the end of the session, Bernardo Cardoso, from the Digital, Internet and Television department (DIT), demonstrated the integration of the various components in a multilayered architecture, given the various subsystems involved. One of the goals was to support the whole new ecosystem in standards and open and multi operator platforms, capable of being the basis for a new generation of Interactive TV services. In addition, the use of open Set-top Boxes (STB) and the development of an Application Bootstrap Kit (ABK) for this ecosystem allow the creation of new entertainment formats by a wide community of developers / creators. The demonstrations included use cases of Multi Experience, Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), continuity of the television experience between devices, among others, always accompanied by a very interested and participative audience.   Source adapted from  [1]

SHORT DESCRIPTION

The second edition of Internet Day@UA, an event promoted by the DigiMedia Research Centre and the Department of Communication and Art of the University of Aveiro, ended with a sense of fulfillment and success.

This one day event intended to associate the University of Aveiro, the Department of Communication and Art and DigiMedia Research Centre to the global celebration of the “World Internet Day” that happened on several countries around the world on May 17th.

The opening table, that comprise the Vice-dean Artur Silva, the Director of the Communication and Art Department, Rui Raposo, and the Scientific Coordinator of DigiMedia Research Centre Fernando Ramos, were presented with a full house. After the opening table, Matthew Kushin, Associate Professor from Sheperd University, reflected, through several examples, on the role social media has on everyday life. Professor Armando Malheiro, from University of Porto, followed Matthew Kushin and discussed the importance of associating social sciences and technology as a way to understand the needs of a digital society.

In the afternoon, representatives of several companies (Altice, Bayer Portugal, Pixelmatters, Gfi, Pictonio, Ubiwhere, Inova-ria, Gocontact, Farfetch, Micro i/o) where invited to assist and comment tree students projects associated to the degree cycle of New Communication Tecnhonogies (Planos, SAPO Campus Analytics, Phil).

We finished the Day with the Speed Dating moment. Students and companies facing together in a presentation, evaluation and selection process towards future collaborations.