Technology plays a relevant role in mental health. Specifically, integrating pervasive technologies with artificial intelligence (AI) holds promising potential to collect users’ data, monitor individuals daily, and support treatment. However, the lack of trust in the collected data is a common limitation of prior work on mental health and technology. This paper proposes involving the user in a Human-in-the-loop approach as a solution to deal with the lack of accuracy of data collected through pervasive technology. In our study, end users judged and evaluated the data collected at two different times: before training the computational model, which would be later used for classification; and afterward to evaluate newly collected data that would be predicted and classified by the model. The solution proposed was implemented and tested in a project related to depression in college students. The results indicate positive reactions to the predicted classifications.

Preschool children may interact with the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and program the behavior of these products. However, not much is known about the children’s ideas for a software programming tool. This research aimed at investigating how children aged from 4 to 6 years perceive the programming of IoT devices and, from practice with them, build a prototype of a programming environment for them. To this end, three Participatory Design techniques were adapted and applied to (and with) 30 children. A final prototype was built and its usability was assessed with the participation of six children. Photos and videos collected during the empirical assessment were later analysed using the Content Analysis Method. During the design, children relied on buttons and explicitly represented the IoT devices and adults in the user interfaces. They also adopted a top-down approach to programming IoT devices. Lessons learned for the design of these solutions are discussed.

This study characterizes the literature on teaching computational thinking (CT) to preschoolers aged 4 to 5 years. Previous research and published systematic studies have provided important contributions about CT teaching to elementary and high school children. However, to date, there is no systematic overview of CT education for preschoolers. For this reason, this systematic mapping synthesizes 82 studies on CT teaching, through the implementation and evaluation of tools and activities to teach, improve or measure the CT knowledge acquired by children. Furthermore, studies on courses or training offered to preschool teachers related to the teaching of CT were also considered. From the selected studies, the following information was collected: year of publication; recovery sources and databases; vehicles and places of publication; temporal delimitation of research, research approach, nature and research method; CT teaching approaches; tools used to teach CT and how they are classified according to their physical characteristics and, finally, participants and individuals responsible for the research. The results suggest an increase in the number of publications in recent years, revealing the interest of researchers in the topic. Furthermore, we observed a trend towards the use of physical artifacts and the use of the disconnected computing approach to teaching CT skills to preschool children. The results also exposed that preschool teachers have little autonomy in implementing CT teaching activities because those are mostly implemented by computer professionals (researchers, teachers, etc.). This is because preschool teachers are still discouraged from teaching computer and technology-related content to children, considering them complex and disconnected from basic curricula. However, when teachers are trained to teach CT, they become interested in the content and become more active during the teaching process. We argue for integrating CT-related content into education curricula and supporting preschool teachers to implement it autonomously in their classrooms.

This article presents, analyzes, and discusses why and how one can think about the insertion of technology linked to science and computing for children aged 4 and 5 years old in early childhood education. The reflections presented here support the work carried out since 2018 by the Project Learning and Experimenting with Technology and Science in the Education of Children Aged 4 to 5 Years Old. It seeks to put aside the thought that reduces contact with technology to tablets, cell phones or even the assembly of robotics kits. In this sense, based on the fields of neuroscience and cultural historical theory to think about child development and by the concept of active user, i.e., one that uses and creates computer technologies in a critical, meaningful, reflective, and ethical way, we understand that technology involves all human creations that alter the natural, cultural, and social environment in which we find ourselves. We recognize the dangers for the development of children and the reductionism of children’s contact with technology and propose a work that does not disassociate science, mathematics, design, engineering, and computing centered on elements of children’s daily lives, built with hands-on learning.

Muitas barreiras que há décadas obstruem o avanço igualitário do ensino da computação nas escolas não são exclusivas à realidade brasileira. Como contraponto, neste artigo, olha-se para o contexto do Reino Unido e para as necessidades de transformação também identificadas no ensino de computação para crianças em idade escolar no país. Diante dessa análise, propõe-se uma visão atualizada para o ensino de computação que é mais ampla no conceito de artefato tecnológico em vez do computador visto apenas como um meio no qual são usados recursos pedagógicos, que privilegia o design e as demandas do contexto de uso em vez do foco na lógica, no algoritmo ou na programação e se relaciona com diversas áreas do conhecimento. Ao final, sugestões simples são deixadas aos professores que têm a intenção de ensinar computação de forma que as crianças percebam a tecnologia como parte do seu contexto social e consigam criar soluções para problemas reais presentes no cotidiano delas.

Argumentation is an inherent skill in human communication, both in oral and written situations.  Well-founded arguments are important to support decision-making and learning, as well as to reach widely accep-ted conclusions.  As a research area, argumentation isa multidisciplinary field that studies the processes ofdebate  and  reasoning.   In  computational  linguistics, investigations have been carried out to (i) identify ar-guments and their units and (ii) generate or (iii) evalu-ate the quality of arguments.  However, most currentwork  focuses  on  argument  mining  in  formal  Englishtexts.  In this article, we evaluated the quality of argu-mentation in political domain tweets, written in Bra-zilian Portuguese, using traditional machine learningalgorithms  –  such  as  Logistic  Regression,  KNearestNeighbor,  Decision  Trees,  Support  Vector  Machines(SVM), Random Forest and Naive Bayes – and alsoa fine-tuning of two neural models (BERTimbau andRobertaTwitterBR). In addition to bringing practicalresults for the assessment of argumentation quality ina challenging textual genre, such as Twitter, and in acontroversial domain, such as Brazilian politics, thisarticle also aims to fill in the lack of works that au-tomatically assess the quality of arguments in Portu-guese.  Among the evaluated classification algorithms,the model obtained from the fine-tuning of BERTim-bau  presented  the  best  results,  with  an  accuracy  of69.65% when all classes were considered and 100.00%for messages with high quality of argumentation.

Therapeutic digital games aim to support rehabilitation treatments and help patients understand, motivate and persist in therapeutic practices. Although there are several therapeutic digital games available, their development highly depends on the involvement of computer science professionals. This paper’s contribution is about how RUFUS was designed as a platform to provide EUP (End-User Programming) for healthcare professionals. This platform enables these professionals to author digital games aiming at performing therapeutic activities with their patients and/or caregivers. The platform has a web interface for game authoring, currently composed of three different game mechanics, as well as the possibility of viewing interaction reports. It also encompasses a mobile app that displays the games created for patients. Participatory design techniques were used during the design and evaluation of the three games to engage different stakeholders and also empower healthcare providers. A preliminary evaluation of the RUFUS point to an easy-to-use design solution, but which still needs further testing to ensure intuitiveness for users who have no experience with games or with authoring interfaces.

Thirty-five million people worldwide are affected by Substance Use Disorders (SUDs). Digital games can exert therapeutic effect in this domain and the development of these games by the end users themselves tends to potentiate the adherence and effectiveness of the games. Personas is a consolidated technique to support design solutions. There are studies in the literature that examine the creation of personas with the participation of health professionals. However, patients are generally just information providers and a more active participation is a desirable outcome to improve the design of digital systems for the healthcare domain. This paper investigates the co-creation of personas and digital games with therapeutic potential by patients recovering SUDs. Twenty-one patients, one healthcare professional and four computer science professionals took part in the workshops. In total, were created seven personas and four digital games with therapeutic potential. By conducting a qualitative analysis, we were able to determine eleven lessons learned from the process. programming IoT devices. Lessons learned for the design of these solutions are discussed.

To address diverse interaction needs of heterogeneous users' groups, user interfaces must be flexible to accommodate for customization that are specific to each user profile. Although, existing web interfaces provide some flexibility, some problems still remain: a) manual adjustments carried out by end users are required for each web application; b) the flexibility provided by current web interfaces is insufficient to address diverse interaction needs of various users' profiles and c) few users are aware about such options to customize the presentation of web interfaces. To contribute to the customization of user interface according to the needs of diverse users, in this work we asses the suitability of a tool that customize web interfaces based on the needs and preferences of end users. UIFlex is a web-based browser plugin that enables users to define their interaction profile. In this task, users are supported by fifteen web-based design rules that were extracted from the literature and the knowledge of authorities. To customize the presentation of web interfaces, UIFlex relies on a set of rules defined for each individual user and "injects" JavaScript codes, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and in some cases HyperText Markup Language (HTML) codes in any page that follows W3C standards. UIFlex was evaluated by 104 users of diverse interaction profiles. The results obtained are promising and suggest that the solution improves the perception that the interactive system performs as desired by users.

Access to knowledge, information, and technology is a key element for the development of individuals and society as a whole. While computing systems play a fundamental role in this process, efforts aimed at diminishing the worldwide digital divide are still scarce. In this study, we propose a tailoring-based approach for personal systems design as a way to promote digital and social inclusion in contexts of highly unbalanced access to computing technology. Our approach uses theories and methods of participatory design and semiotics to tailor user interfaces according to principles of universal access. We propose the integration of the PLuRaL framework for the system conception and design with the FAN (flexibility through AJAX and norms) framework for implementation and deployment of tailorable user interfaces, reaching a complete approach for the creation of systems. The approach, frameworks, and methods were effectively analyzed during the design of an inclusive social network system in Brazil. In addition, we present an evaluation of the developed system and discuss possible impacts on digital inclusion. 

This paper reports the results of a 2-year-long imagery analysis about microcephaly in Latin America from the perspective of caregivers. The content analysis included 500 images associated with the hashtag microcefalia posted on Instagram in 2017 and 2018. Microcephaly affected more than 4,000 babies in Latin America in a few years, and the quick outbreak of the epidemic made Instagram an accessible tool for caregivers to express their thoughts, feelings, raise funds and awareness, exchange information about the condition, and find peer support. Most publications are managed by the mother of female patients seeking to celebrate milestones, exchange information, and find social support. The comprehensive analysis of the contents posted elicits the caregivers’ perspectives about microcephaly besides also clarifying how Instagram empowers them to raise awareness and communicate about the condition. Instagram demonstrated to be a low-cost support tool for caregivers. Also, it allows healthcare practitioners to disseminate medical information through online campaigns. By allowing users to share their individual perspectives and experiences through pictures, images, and videos, Instagram has become popular for users promptly seeking for information and social support.

Designers can select media from user-generated tags in social networks to improve the design with the aim of evoking certain emotions. However, can they be relied on for that? Will users feel the same emotions as those that were linked to the media? This paper aims to support the decision-making of the designers, by exploring the observers’ emotions in pictures from social tags. An empirical online study was carried out with 410 volunteers who classified pictures from Flickr that were related to the five basic emotions plus Bneutral^ tag. The results suggest that there are differences between the tag and the emotion felt by this group of people for particular emotions. For instance, the findings suggest that the selection of pictures for disgust and anger needs additional criteria as well as collective indexing.

Forest fires are a constant problem in many regions, one being the Cerrado Biome in Brazilian Federal District. This type of incident is largely originated by non-natural causes, and their control depends on the response capacity of local brigades and on daily practices of surrounding populations. Therefore, the goal of this project is to propose mechanisms to support local communities, brigades and firefighters, delivered through the FDWithoutFire system. The system has as core the crowdsourcing of information from the community, which participates in producing voluntary information to generate alert reports to enhance monitoring services of fire situations in protected areas. Then, local brigades and firefighters need to develop their own Situation Awareness, which is an understanding of the events, to have a more assertive decision-making and ensure a better allocation of resources for emergency response. To support them, FDWithoutFire uses a process of Data and Information Fusion, based on the Quantify fusion model, integrating data from multiple sources to produce more significant information, aiming to stimulate the SAW of the users. This paper describes the technological routines of FDWithoutFire, demonstrating the applicability of the work by showing how it treats a fire occurrence. 

Objective: to evaluate the presence of depressive symptoms and cognitive disorders before and after an intervention program with a digital therapeutic game among elderly persons undergoing hemodialysis. Method:  a quasi-experimental study was carried out with 26 elderly patients on hemodialysis. For the data collection, a questionnaire relating to sociodemographic and health conditions, the Geriatric Depression Scale - 15 items and Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination Revised were used. The intervention with the digital therapeutic game was performed over 5 sessions. Results:  of the participants, 80.8% were male, with a mean age of 66.7 (± 5.8) years. The mean pre-intervention depressive symptom score was 3.9 (± 3.0) while post-intervention it was 2.8 (± 2.9), representing a statistically significant difference (p = 0.005). Regarding cognitive function, there was no statistically significant difference before and after the intervention. There was a statistically significant difference in the mean of the depressive symptom scores, which were lower after the intervention. In addition, there was no statistically significant difference in the mean of the cognitive assessments. Conclusion:  intervention studies with patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment are still scarce and this study describes the positive results of an intervention with a digital therapeutic game, demonstrating improvement in the depressive symptoms of the participants.

are not handled. One of such barriers in this context is the presence of low-quality data or information. Hence, a challenging issue in this field is to determine how to generate, score, update and represent data and information quality cues to support operators to reason under uncertainties and improve their understanding about an ongoing situation. The state of the art in this area presents a research gap regarding methodologies for the information quality assessment which can be used in the emergency management domain. Also, there is a lack of approaches that interface with different levels of situational information during an assessment routine. Hence, in order to enhance operators situational awareness, a new methodology is presented to improve the capabilities of SA systems by enriching knowledge about situations with reliable metadata. Such methodology, named Information Quality Assessment Methodology in the Context of Emergency situational awareness, is composed by: elici tation of data and information quality requirements; definition of functions and metrics to quantify quality dimensions, such as completeness, timeliness, consistency, relevance and uncertainty; and the representation of situational information by the instantiation of a situation model, which can be con sumed by an ontology. Finally, a case study is addressed to verify the applicability of the methodology using data and information from a robbery event. The results obtained show situational models with qualified information that feed SA systems, enabling them to be aware of information quality. 

Users’ emotional states influence decision making and are essential for the knowledge and explanation of users’ behavior with computer applications. However, collecting emotional states during the interaction time with users is a onerous task because it requires very careful handling of the empirical observation, leading researchers to carry out assessments of emotional responses only at the end of the interaction. This paper reports our research in assessing users’ behavior at interaction time and also describes the results of a case study which analyzed users’ emotional responses while interacting with a game. We argue that capturing emotions during interaction time can help us in making changes on users’ behavior (e.g., changing from stressed to a less stressed state) or even suggesting an user to have a break. This can be all possible if both (1) emotions are captured during interaction and (2) changes are suggested at runtime (e.g., through persuasion). The results of this study suggest that there are significant differences between emotional responses captured during the interaction and those declared at the end. 

The growth of the elderly population in many countries makes it necessary to develop appropriate technologies for them. These include mobile phones, as they are increasingly becoming cheaper and more widespread. Furthermore, many families would like their elderly relatives to use this technology as a means of fostering digital inclusion. However, the current designs for mobile devices software are aimed at a young audience, rather than taking account of the different needs of the elderly. The elderly population can be characterized by their wide diversity which can be attributed to decades of varied experiences. Moreover, this is heightened by sharp differences in acquired education levels, use of technology at work, cognitive skills and physical dexterity. The authors believe that this diversity is even more striking in developing countries, such as Brazil, since in these countries a huge economic gap still exists between different elderly people. This paper seeks to investigate: (1) What can be done to solve the problem of enabling the elderly to use smartphone interfaces and (2) how one should develop adaptive smartphone interfaces that can be targeted to the elderly. With this in mind, this paper shows how a prototyped platform was implemented and evaluated. It is worth stressing that real-life experiments with Brazilian elderly people were carried out. The results suggested that there had been a reduction in the interaction time as well as a significant increase in user satisfaction.

This paper describes a participatory process to enrich Personas, aiming to characterize the intended audience of therapeutic applications in the context of mental health. Moreover, the paper presents how the information obtained in the process can aid on therapeutic games design aiming to support the rehabilitation of chemical dependent and depressive patients.

There are several barriers that prevent Brazilian citizen to access knowledge, including the way in which computational technology is presented considering the diversity of interaction skills in our population. One approach for suiting the diverse and mutable interaction requirements is to tailor interfaces according to the users’ preferences or needs. Although literature regarding tailoring presents results with diverse foci, there has been a lack of works considering methods and techniques to support designers in their practice. This paper presents a practical approach to elicit and formalize the tailorable behavior making interactive systems more flexible. The elicitation of the different possible interfaces is performed with users’ participation and the tailorable behavior is formalized with a norm-based structure. A case study, in the context of an inclusive social network system, is described as well as the evaluation with final users. 

Information and Communication Technology has the potential of benefiting citizens, allowing access to knowledge, communication and collaboration, and thus promoting the process of constitution of a fairer society. The design of systems that make sense to the users' community and that respect their diversity demands socio-technical views and an in-depth analysis of the involved parties. The authors have adopted Organizational Semiotics and Participatory Design as theoretical and methodological frames of reference to face this challenge in the design of an Inclusive Social Network System for the Brazilian context. This paper presents the use of some artifacts adapted from Problem Articulation Method to clarify concepts and prospect solutions. Results of this clarification fed the Semantic Analysis Method from which this paper presents and discusses an Ontology Chart for the domain and the first signs of the inclusive social network system. 

The fast evolution of technology hasled to a growing demand for video data, increasing the amount ofresearch into efficient systems to manage those materials. Making efficient use of video information requires that data be accessed in a user-friendly way. Ideally, one would like to perform video search using an intuitive tool. Most of existing browsers for the interactive search of video sequences, however, have employed a too rigid layout to arrange the results, restricting users to explore the results using list- or grid-based layouts. This paper presents a novel approach for the interactive search that displays the result set in a flexible manner. The proposed method is based on a simple and fast algorithm to build video stories and on an effective visual structure to arrange the storyboards, called Clustering Set. It is able to group together videos with similar content and to organize the resultset in awell-defined tree. Resultsfrom a rigorous empirical comparisonwith a subjective evaluation show thatsuch a strategy makesthe navigation more coherent and engaging to users. 

This paper analysis the distribution of some characteristics of computer scientists in Brazil according to regions and gender. Computer scientist is defined as the faculty of a graduate level computer science department. Under this definition, there were 886 computer scientists in Brazil in November 2006. We studied the self-declared research areas, the production of journal and conference papers of these scientists, and whether they receive a recognition fellowship by one of Brazilian grant agents, and analyse the differences regarding the geo-political region in Brazil and the gender of the scientists. 

Projetar material instrucional para Web é uma tarefa difícil para professores que não têm experiência em pedagogia e projeto Web. Neste trabalho apresenta-se a ferramenta Cognitor, uma instância da Linguagem de Padrões Cog-Learn, para o apoio aos professores durante o projeto de material instrucional. O objetivo é melhor organizar o conteúdo na interface visualizada pelo aluno, facilitando a sua interação e o seu processo de aprendizagem.

Acredita-se que para um processo efetivo de ensino e aprendizagem em Educação a Distância (EAD) é necessário apoiar o professor na tarefa de gerar material instrucional, estimulando-o a utilizar recursos pedagógicos que facilitem a construção do conhecimento do aluno. Neste trabalho avaliou-se um conjunto de estratégias cognitivas no apoio à geração e estruturação de material instrucional para EAD, visando o aumento da usabilidade e qualidade do material. Resultados dos estudos de caso sugerem que as estratégias são soluções de sucesso para alguns problemas recorrentes na edição desses hiperdocumentos. Portanto pretende-se, numa etapa subsequente, formalizar essas estratégias no formato de Padrões.

are not handled. One of such barriers in this context is the presence of low-quality data or information. Hence, a challenging issue in this field is to determine how to generate, score, update and represent data and information quality cues to support operators to reason under uncertainties and improve their understanding about an ongoing situation. The state of the art in this area presents a research gap regarding methodologies for the information quality assessment which can be used in the emergency management domain. Also, there is a lack of approaches that interface with different levels of situational information during an assessment routine. Hence, in order to enhance operators situational awareness, a new methodology is presented to improve the capabilities of SA systems by enriching knowledge about situations with reliable metadata. Such methodology, named Information Quality Assessment Methodology in the Context of Emergency situational awareness, is composed by: elici tation of data and information quality requirements; definition of functions and metrics to quantify quality dimensions, such as completeness, timeliness, consistency, relevance and uncertainty; and the representation of situational information by the instantiation of a situation model, which can be con sumed by an ontology. Finally, a case study is addressed to verify the applicability of the methodology using data and information from a robbery event. The results obtained show situational models with qualified information that feed SA systems, enabling them to be aware of information quality.