Papers for
human-computer interaction developers
Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.
Lightweight neural network recognizes hand-drawn shapes in real time
A Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network for Real-Time Recognition of Hand-Drawn Geometric Shapes
Abstract: Recognizing hand-drawn geometric shapes is a foundational sub-problem of sketch recognition, with applications in education, human-computer interaction, and diagram digitization. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a desktop application that recognizes four basic hand-drawn geometric shapes, circle, square, rectangle, and triangle using a compact Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). A dataset of 2,000 labeled 28x28-pixel shape images was collected independently and released publicly. The classifier consists of three convolutional blocks (16, 32, and 64 filters) with max-pooling, an in-model data-augmentation stage (random horizontal flip, rotation, and zoom), a dropout-regularized dense layer of 128 units, and a 4-way linear output layer, totaling 97{,}956 trainable parameters. The network is trained with the Adam optimizer on a sparse categorical cross-entropy objective computed directly on logits. On an 80/20 train-validation split, the model achieves 94.80% training accuracy and 96.01% validation accuracy with a validation loss of 0.1437. A Tkinter-based graphical interface allows a user to draw a shape with the mouse and receive an immediate class prediction with a confidence score. We situate this system within the broader sketch and shape-recognition literature, compare its accuracy against related hand-drawn shape classification studies, and discuss the limitations inherent to a small, single-contributor dataset. The complete source code, trained model, and per-class datasets are released publicly to support reproducibility.
Multimodal dataset captures humour styles and emotions in video actors
MultiHuSE: A Multimodal Dataset for Humour Styles and Emotions
Abstract: Computational recognition of verbal humour remains a challenging task, requiring an understanding of language, delivery style, emotions, and cultural context. Most existing approaches focus on binary classification and lack datasets that capture psychological dimensions of humour alongside variations in expression. We introduce MultiHuSE, a multimodal dataset comprising 2,407 high-definition videos of 50 demographically diverse actors performing 1,463 text samples across four psychological humour styles (affiliative, aggressive, self-enhancing, and self-deprecating), as well as neutral content. A subset is additionally annotated for underlying emotions. The dataset uniquely captures multiple actor interpretations of the same texts, enabling systematic analysis of expressive diversity. Baseline experiments show that multimodal fusion outperforms unimodal approaches (80.1% vs. 77.4% accuracy) in humour style classification, with particularly strong gains for affiliative humour (66% to 74%). While text provides the strongest individual signal, fusion models deliver meaningful improvements. We hope that MultiHuSE provides empirical support for psychological theories linking humour and emotion, while also opening new avenues for research in human communication, well-being, and AI-driven interaction. The dataset is available for academic use under an End-User Licence Agreement.