afrodrigues@fc.ul.pt

André Rodrigues

PostDoc Researcher

I received my PhD with distinction and honour in 2020 with the topic Human-Powered Smartphone Assistance for Blind People. The last six years have been dedicated to developing and evaluating mobile services, applications and platforms for a variety of contexts and user groups (e.g. people with visual and/or motor impairments, people experiencing homelessness). I am an HCI researcher with a particular interest in how technology can and is leveraged in accessibility, health and gaming. I currently serve as SIGACCESS Newsletter editor.

Publications

Authoring Accessible Media Content on Social Networks

Letícia Seixas Pereira, José Coelho, André Rodrigues, João Guerreiro, Tiago Guerreiro, Carlos Duarte

ASSETS 2022 ‑ ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Investigating the Tradeoffs of Everyday Text-Entry Collection Methods

André Rodrigues, Hugo Nicolau, André Santos, Diogo Branco, Jay Rainey, David Verweij, Jan Smeddinck, Kyle Montague, Tiago Guerreiro

CHI 2022 ‑ ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May, 2022

PDF
website
🏅 Best Paper Award

Using Games to Practice Screen Reader Gestures

Gonçalo Lobo, David Gonçalves, Pedro Pais, Tiago Guerreiro, André Rodrigues

ASSETS 2021 ‑ ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility

PDF

Promoting Self-Efficacy Through an Effective Human-Powered Nonvisual Smartphone Task Assistant

André Rodrigues, André Santos, Kyle Montague, Tiago Guerreiro

CSCW 2021 ‑ ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, October, 2021

PDF

WildKey: A Privacy-Aware Keyboard Toolkit for Data Collection In-The-Wild

André Rodrigues, André Santos, Kyle Montague, Hugo Nicolau, Tiago Guerreiro

WildByDesign 2021 ‑ UbiComp/ISWC Workshop on Designing Ubiquitous Health Monitoring Technologies for Challenging Environments

Projects

A chat application with the keyboard open and the written sentences displayed: Collects anywhere the user writes, Password and number fields are ignored, calculates more than 20 metrics

A privacy-aware keyboard toolkit for data collection in-the-wild. With it you will be able to collect everyday typing data, enabling continuous and spontaneous assessments, without collecting any sensitive information.

A keyboard scheme with dots representing each of the collected touch points. Each key as dots from a different color. There is a concentration of dots on the most used keys (e.g. a, s and space)

Accessible Text-Entry

For over 10 years we have investigated nonvisual text input on touchscreens. We have characterized in dept users’ behaviors and contributed with novel interfaces and interaction techniques.

Hybrid-Brailler prototype (a) PCB components. (b) 3D-printed case attached to a mobile device with three rows of three buttons that are on the back of the device.

Haptics and mobile devices! In Braille I/O we have focused on bringing Braille back to the forefront of the digital era with novel techniques and a exploration of haptics to enable text input on mobile devices.

A screenshot of the assistive play donor application. On the top side it shows a screenshot of fruit ninja with two traces, of two different swipes. Below a list of options to annotate which actions those traces correspond to. Finally, in the last third of the image, a timeline is shown with the limits of each gestured identified by the app.

Inclusive Gaming

Embracing mixed-ability gaming! By acknowledging that different games already require different skills from players we are exploring how games can be designed to leverage this asymmetry based on abilities.

The robot Baxter with his arms extended and a blind person feeling its hands

HRI for Health & Accessibility

Robots have a very particular set of skills. Skills that have been acquired over a vast amount of reasearch. Skills that make them powerful tools to leverage for social inclusion, accessibility and interaction.

A blind person interacting with his smarptphone using over the ear headphones

Smartphone Accessibility

From newcomers to experts, we have characterized the challenges that blind people overcome. We explored how to provide effective self-contained smartphone assistance with the ultimate goal of promoting self-efficacy.

Storyboard demonstrating a shower attack.

Unauthorized Access to Smartphones

Unlike unlock authentication, which is an active defense against physical intrusion, passive defenses aim to primarily provide awareness, traceability, and recovery from intrusions; and to only secondarily engage counter-measures like blocking access. In sensitive computer systems, passive security is embodied in Intrusion Detection and Response (IDR) systems. To end-users, however, parallel capabilities remain unavailable, or lack security and usability validation, despite the severe privacy implications of intrusions. We thus envision a mobile IDR which is usable by individuals with no technical training; which can detect suspicious activity based on semantics of intrusion behavior; and which can respond to threats per their importance.