WELCOME! I AM
A COMPUTER
SCIENTIST AN ASSISTANT
PROFESSOR AN ACESSIBILITY
RESEARCHER

ABOUT ME

Education

Ph.D. in Informatics
🇨🇭 USI - Università della Svizzera Italiana - Switzerland (2019 - 2024)
Laboratory of User eXperience, Interaction and Accessibility (LUXIA)
Top 250 University at QS Ranking (2022)
Download my Doctoral Dissertation | Advisor: Prof. Dr. Monica Landoni

Doctoral Mobility
🇦🇺 QUT - Queensland University of Technology - Australia (2023 - 2023)
Design Participation Lab
Top 200 University at QS Ranking (2024)
Advisor: Prof. Dr. Laurianne Sitbon

M.Sc. in Computer Science
🇧🇷 UFRGS - Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - Brazil (2014 - 2016)
Graphics, Visualization and Interaction Lab
Top 500 University at QS Ranking (2017)
Course History | Final Grade: A
Advisor: Prof. Dr. Carla Dal Sasso Freitas

B.Sc. in Computer Science
🇧🇷 UFPEL - Federal University of Pelotas - Brazil (2008 - 2013)
Top 1000 University at Times Higher Education Ranking (2020)
Digital Image Processing
Advisor: Prof. Dr. Marilton Sanchotene de Aguiar

Exchange Program
🇵🇹 U.Porto - Porto University - Portugal (2010 - 2011)
Top 300 University at QS Ranking (2015)
Human-Computer Interaction
Prof. Dr. Miguel Coimbra & Prof. Dr. Verónica Orvalho

Experiences

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Visiting Researcher - University of Strathclyde (2023 - 2023) - Scotland
      - Digital Health and iSchool research groups
      - Talk: Rethinking Museums and Accessible Technoogy with People with Intellectual Disabilities
🇦🇺 Visiting Researcher - Queensland University of Technology (QUT) (2023 - 2023) - Australia
      - SNSF Doctoral Mobility Funding
      - Talk: Designing Accessible Solutions With and For People with Intellectual Disabilities
      - Research with accessibility and social robots, artificial intelligence, and public displays
🇦🇺 Research Collaboration - QUT Art Museum (2023 - 2023) - Australia
      - Museum Research Sessions
🇦🇺 Research Collaboration - Endeavour Foundation (2023 - 2023) - Australia
      - Museum Outings
      - Research Sessions
🇯🇵 Visiting Researcher - Miraikan Accessibility Lab (2023 - 2023) - Japan
      - Accessibility Report
      - Talk: Designing Accessible Solutions With and For People with Intellectual Disabilities
🇦🇺 Visiting Researcher - Monash University (2023 - 2023) - Australia
      - Research with accessibility, creative fashion and electronic making
🇦🇺 Research Collaboration - Wallara Foundation (2023 - 2023) - Australia
      - Research Sessions
🇺🇸 Visiting Researcher - New York University (NYU) (2022 - 2022) - USA
      - Ability Project
      - Access and Assistive Technology in Historic Sites and Museums
🇮🇹 Research Collaboration - Anffas (2021 - 2022) - Italy
      - Research - SNSF Project Funding
🇮🇹 Research Collaboration - Trieste Natural Science Museum (2021 - 2022) - Italy
      - Museum Research Sessions
🇨🇭 Research Collaboration - Attgabes (2020 - 2021) - Switzerland
      - Research - SNSF Project Funding
🇨🇭 Research Collaboration - Lugano Arte e Cultura (2020 - 2021) - Switzerland
      - Museum Research Sessions
🇨🇭 Ph.D. Candidate & Researcher - USI (2019 - Now) - Switzerland
      - SNSF Ph.D. Project
      - Co-adivising Undergraduate and Master's students
      - Research sessions with local and international participants
      - User Experience Design (TA)
      - Software Atelier 2: Human-Computer Interaction (TA)
      - Experimentation & Evaluation (TA)
      - Software Atelier 4: Software Engineering Project (TA)
🇧🇷 Informatics Assistant Professor - IFMS (2017 - Now) - Brazil
      - Computational Logic
      - Introduction to Algorithms
      - Requirements Management and Systems Modeling
      - Human-Computer Interaction
      - Research Methods in Computer Science
      - Final Research Project II
      - Introduction to Informatics
      - Integrated Management System
      - Software Engineering
      - Advisor in projects
🇧🇷 Researcher - UFF (2017 - 2017) - Brazil
      - Two months CAPES Scholarship
🇧🇷 Informatics Lecturer - IFSUL (2015 - 2017) - Brazil
      - Operating Systems
      - Algorithms & Data Structures
      - Management and Entrepreneurship in Computer Science
      - Database
      - Computer Networks
      - Advisor in 2 projects - 4 students
🇧🇷 Researcher - UFRGS (2014 - 2016) - Brazil
      - CNPq Scholarship
      - Project with NEXO/AES SUL
🇧🇷 Researcher - UFPEL (2012 - 2013) - Brazil
      - Image Processing
🇧🇷 Database Management - ALM/UFPEL (2012) - Brazil
🇧🇷 Teaching Assistant - UFPEL (2011) - Brazil
      - Algorithms & Data Structures
🇵🇹 Exchange Program - Researcher - University of Porto (2010 - 2011) - Portugal
🇧🇷 Software/Hardware Maintenance - UFPEL (2009 - 2010) - Brazil

Links

> Researchgate
> Google Scholar
> Linkedin
> Lattes Curriculum (Portuguese)

Personal

My full name is Leandro Soares Guedes (in citations GUEDES, L.S. or GUEDES, L.) and I am a Brazilian citizen. Seeking opportunities and experiences, I've lived in several cities and some countries. Living in multicultural environments fascinates me, allowing analysis of human behavior and how we are different and similar at the same time. When I'm not working, what interests me most include: Technology; Photography (see Instagram); Listen to music (mainly pop, r&b, rock, and hip hop); Movies and Videos; Socialize and go to events; Travel; Get to know places, people and cultures; Cold and mild temperatures; Nature; Pets; Design; Swimming and Gym.

Here are some pictures took by me of the beautiful city where I am currently living (Lugano - Switzerland):

PROJECTS

ACCESS+: Designing Accessible Solutions for People with Intellectual Disabilities

2021 - Current

Digital accessibility and assistive tools have been used to enhance the experience of people with different abilities. Designing accessible solutions with and for people with disabilities makes a massive contribution to their life quality. This project will follow design steps, develop prototypes, and a final version of an application to be used before, during, and after a museum visit. The application will allow our users to listen to audio files, see pictures and videos, and write annotations. The user interface fulfills essential accessibility guidelines and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) techniques.

Project under the supervision of Dr. Monica Landoni and my Co-supervision: Funded by UROP Research Summer Internship Project at USI
Student: Valentina Ferrari and Davide Trupia

BEST: Beyond Screen readers and Alt Text - Designing Multisensory Alternative to Text for Different Reading Abilities

2019 - Current

This project explores how technology can support different forms of reading and sense making of text and multimedia content. Reading is a complex process that includes seeing the character (accessibility via visibility), being able to distinctly identify each character from the other (recognition via legibility) and finally making sense of the characters as a group (interpretation via readability). The aim of our project is to provide useful and usable assistive tools for people with different reading abilities for a rewarding reading experience. We take inspiration from works on screen readers as these are widely available to help users make sense of written text and images, and we move on considering how this paradigm could be further expanded to provide a multisensory reading experience. BEST will adopt and further expand that design space for producing alternative representations of text (Alt to Text) to fit different reading abilities and provide an effective and rewarding reading experience. We believe that properly designed multisensory representations have the potential to serve, not only readers visually impaired, but also those experiencing either temporarily or permanently a variety of reading difficulties. Our main contribution will be the design, implementation and evaluation of tools to support reading while catering for different abilities. By considering different combinations of context (formal and non), age (from pre-school children to adults), and abilities, we will produce and test a series of prototypes to support reading. We will focus on two specific sub-projects: EPPics (Enhanced Personalised Picture Stories) and Muses (Multisensory story-telling) that will involve adults with mild cognitive disabilities as visitors in a museum, a non formal context, together with their care givers and educators. They will take an active role in collaborative critical design. The objective of this sub-project is to develop tools for supporting reading before, during and after the visit, to suit individual needs and preferences.

Project under the supervision of Dr. Monica Landoni at USI: Funded by SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation).
Students: Leandro Soares Guedes and Sveva Valguarnera

Publications

Augmented Reality for Interaction with Plant Growth

2019 - 2019

Augmented reality for interaction in art exhibitionsThroughout the evolution of humanity itself, technology has served as support for new evolutionary horizons, as well as valuable information for areas such as agriculture has been spread and exposed to the world. Among the latest technologies and forms of interaction, there is augmented reality, where there is the overlap of digitally generated virtual information with the user's real environment. This project aims to use augmented reality in a multidisciplinary way to interact with plant growth by creating an application that, when executed on a smartphone with a camera, will scan barcodes to display the modeling of the different stages of plant growth digitally. The objective is to facilitate interaction, comparison, and access to information, serving as educational support for learning and also for professionals in the field.

Project under my supervision at IFMS: EDITAL​ ​N°​ ​028/2019 ​–​ ​PROPI/IFMS.
Coadvisor: Everton dos Santos de Oliveira
Students: Gustavo Vargas Torres e Lucas Amarilla Saucedo

Decision: an interactive game based on user choice

2019 - 2019

Technology has evolved rapidly, and with it, access to games has become increasingly widespread. Interactivity is a fundamental aspect of this phenomenon, in terms of games, it enables the user to make choices that influence the course of the game's history, making them considered interactive fiction today. A recent example of this is presented in the movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, in which viewers are subjected to various questions that result in a final decision involving the protagonist. From this, this project intends to combine the wide diffusion of games with the pedagogical perspective of serious games, to propose the development of an interactive game, called Decision, which should address issues related to the clarification and prevention of mental disorders, crimes, and acquired diseases. Throughout the game, the user will answer a series of questions to guide the fate of the main character. With this, it is hoped to promote awareness of users who, as in real life, must understand how much their choices have different consequences.

Project under my supervision at IFMS: EDITAL​ ​N°​ ​028/2019 ​–​ ​PROPI/IFMS.
Coadvisor: Ana Paula Macedo Cartapatti Kaimoti
Students: Eloisa Horst da Silva e Manuela Macena dos Santos.

Augmented reality for interaction in art exhibitions

2018 - 2019

Throughout the evolution of humanity itself, technologies have been serving as support for new evolutionary horizons. It is a clear fact that technologies have positively influenced the masses, but they have also led to a departure from local cultures, often leading to oblivion. Among new technologies and forms of interaction, there is augmented reality, where there is overlap of digitally generated virtual information with the user's real environment. In order to combine the use of technology with the local culture, the present project proposes to use augmented reality in the exhibition of works, bringing in a more light and interesting way, especially for the younger populations, the opportunity to contact photographers, regional artists and literary artists.

Project under my supervision at IFMS: EDITAL​ ​N°​ ​027/2018 ​–​ ​PROPI/IFMS.
Coadvisor: Dorgival Pereira da Silva Netto
Students: Gabriellen Vitório da Silva e Luiz André Marques Furlan dos Santos

How to improve the interaction of elderly users in computer systems?

2018 - 2019

The objective of this research is to study the interaction of elderly users with the computer in order to make computer systems more accessible and user friendly to this group of people, since this part of the population encounters a series of obstacles that prevent the rapid understanding and adaptation to technological tools. These obstacles have resulted, over the years, from changes suffered in memory, physical decay, among others. Therefore, a research will be carried out to improve the experience of the elderly in computer systems and make the technology accessible and easy to handle for this group by observing these users during interaction with the technological environments.

Project under my supervision at IFMS: EDITAL​ ​N°​ ​027/2018 ​–​ ​PROPI/IFMS.
Coadvisor: Diego Saqui
Students: Cristiellen Cristina Alves Ribeiro e Soumaya Ounkhir

Usability study and interface development

2017 - 2018

With the evolution of technology and the development of systems increasingly complex, the task of displaying content increases. The use of usability, which refers to the simplicity and easiness with which an interface, a program or a website can be used, becomes an essential requirement for a user-friendly system. The present work seeks to evaluate the usability of educational websites, generating a case study with the IFMS website (Federal Institute of Mato Grosso do Sul), developed to provide information about the Institution. With the intention of evaluating if the website meets the minimum usability requirements, a study was carried out with the collaboration of 52 volunteers, aged between 17 and 49 years. Two types of usability assessment were applied, the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Nielsen Heuristics, both widely used for this type of analysis. Most of the collaborators were able to complete the proposed activities, however, with the average SUS score of 60, some conflicts with the principles of heuristics and usability were shown to be aggravating to the accomplishment of the task with excellence. It has been found that users suffer from search engine problems and consistency among the subsystems that make up the site. Improvement opportunities for educational sites have been identified which will contribute to better usability and easiness of use learning.

Project under my supervision at IFMS: EDITAL​ ​N°​ ​035/2017​ ​–​ ​PROPI/IFMS.
Student: Áurea Hisae Misu

Publications:
- Final Undergraduate Work (Áurea Hisae Misu): Estudo de usabilidade e desenvolvimento de interfaces

MusicVis: Interactive Visualization Tool For Exploring Music Rankings

2016 - 2017

Music rankings are mainly aimed at marketing purposes but also help users in discovering new music as well as comparing songs, artists, albums, etc. This project presents an interactive way to visualize, find and compare music rankings using different techniques, including the display of music attributes. The technique was conceived after a remote survey we conducted to collect data about how people choose music. Our visualization makes easier to obtain information about artists and tracks, and also to compare the data gathered from the two major music rankings, namely Billboard and Spotify. The tool also provides interaction with personal data. The results obtained from experiments with potential users showed that the tool was considered interesting, with an attractive layout. Compared to traditional music ranking tools users preferred ours, but with not such a large difference from using Billboard or Spotify. However, when evaluating the usability of our tool, results are positive, mainly concerning to data filtering and comparison features. MusicVis was also considered easy to learn.

Project under my supervision at IFSUL: Project PD00160616/068.
Students: David Aron Pires Fagundes and Lucas dos Santos Lanzarini

Publications:
- ACM SAC 2017: Exploring Music Rankings with Interactive Visualization
- Master Thesis (UFRGS): MusicVis: Interactive Visualization Tool For Exploring Music Rankings
- SVR 2016: Interactive Music Ranking Visualization
- X MOCITEC 2016 and MOVACI 2016

BD-Vis: Interactive Visualization of Information from a Database

2016 - 2016

Raw analysis of large amounts of information stored in a database becomes cumbersome without a visual or interactive tool. The use of interactive visualizations allows the information to be understood more clearly and faster when compared. BD-Vis was created to help it, a visualization tool that works with information from any database and makes it easy to interact with the user. The system receives information from a database and creates a file in JSON format automatically so that information can be displayed in different visualizations. This same procedure is performed in the filtering, insertion, editing and removal of data, where the same file is updated according to the occurrence of these events promoted by the user. We conclude that through the different visualizations (Bubble Chart, Node-Link Tree and Sunburst) the information could be understood more quickly in comparison to the tabular form, as well as a better exploration of the data, contributing in the discovery of new hypotheses that influence the results of the analysis.

Project under my supervision at IFSUL: BIC/IFSUL – Project PE01160616/026.
Students: Carolina Guth Pinto and Thaiane Teixeira de Azevedo

Publications:
- X MOCITEC 2016: Visualização de Informações de um Banco de Dados em Gráficos Interativos
- Proceedings of IX JIC 2016

Game and Interaction with Second Screen

2014 - 2015

The concept of second screen became popular with the introduction of interactive TVs. In this context, while the user focuses on the TV screen, the exploration of additional content is possible through the use of a smartphone or tablet as a second screen. Lately, dynamic applications, e.g. video games, also started to use a second screen. Nintendo DS and Wii U are the game consoles that began to incorporate these ideas. Dynamic applications are based on real time action and interaction, and their implementation can be very complex specially because users have to change focus between the displays frequently. In this project, we summarize the results found in a set of experimental studies we conducted to verify the usability of interaction techniques based on the use of a second auxiliary screen in dynamic applications. We developed a multiplayer game that employs one main screen shared by two players, each one also using a second (private) screen. From these studies, we elaborate a set of guidelines to help developers in the use of second screens. Although future case studies would improve these guidelines, our experiments show that they contribute with robust principles for developers who want to build multiscreen application.

Publications:
- SVR 2015: Guidelines for Designing Dynamic Applications With Second Screen
- Game: Space Crusher: An Extended Interactive Screen Game

Interactive Visualization and Visual Exploratory Analysis of Data in Different Application Domains

2014 - 2015

Several applications, in several areas of human activity, treat data obtained from sampling, using different sensors, or produce them through the execution of computational processes. In addition, the availability of such data more broadly as a result of the diffusion of information and communication technologies has dramatically increased the amount of data available. Visualization of data and information is focused on helping to explore and accelerate the understanding of data through interactive tools that explore the capacity of the human perceptual system. The central challenge in terms of design is to produce the mapping in a cognitively useful way while taking advantage of the current interaction technology to allow the user to explore the information space and eventually change the mapping parameters. In addition to the visualization and interaction aspects, the aggregation of data analysis methods is essential so that users can migrate from visual exploration to hypothesis analysis and testing in an integrated way. The present proposal has as general objectives: (1) investigation of techniques of visualization and analysis of volumetric data and (2) investigation of techniques of interactive visualization and analysis of information.

Project under the supervision of Dr. Carla Dal Sasso Freitas

Publications:
- WIP SIBGRAPI 2014: Interactive Timeline Visualization of Documents
- WVIS SIBGRAPI 2014: NBAVis: Visualizing National Basketball Association Information