Refine introduction and background chapters; enhance clarity and structure in system design section

thesis/chapters/02_background.tex

@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ A second wave of tools shifted focus toward usability, often achieving accessibi
 
 Choregraphe \cite{Pot2009}, developed by Aldebaran Robotics for the NAO and Pepper robots, offers a visual programming environment based on connected behavior boxes. Researchers can create complex interaction flows using drag-and-drop blocks without writing code in traditional programming languages. However, when new robot platforms emerge or when hardware becomes obsolete, tools like Choregraphe and WoZ4U lose their utility. Pettersson and Wik, in their review of WoZ tools \cite{Pettersson2015}, note that platform-specific systems often fall out of use as technology evolves, forcing researchers to constantly rebuild their experimental infrastructure.
 
-Recent years have seen renewed interest in comprehensive WoZ frameworks. Gibert et al. \cite{Gibert2013} developed the SWoOZ (Super Wizard of Oz) platform, which integrates facial tracking, gesture recognition, and real-time control capabilities to enable naturalistic human-robot interaction studies. Virtual and augmented reality have also emerged as complementary approaches to WoZ. Helgert et al. \cite{Helgert2024} demonstrated how VR-based WoZ environments can simplify experimental setup while providing researchers with precise control over environmental conditions and high fidelity data collection.
+Recent years have seen renewed interest in comprehensive WoZ frameworks. Gibert et al. \cite{Gibert2013} developed the Super Wizard of Oz (SWoOZ) platform, which integrates facial tracking, gesture recognition, and real-time control capabilities to enable naturalistic human-robot interaction studies. Virtual and augmented reality have also emerged as complementary approaches to WoZ. Helgert et al. \cite{Helgert2024} demonstrated how VR-based WoZ environments can simplify experimental setup while providing researchers with precise control over environmental conditions and high fidelity data collection.
 
 This expanding landscape reveals a persistent fundamental gap in the design space of WoZ tools. Flexible, general-purpose platforms like Polonius and OpenWoZ offer powerful capabilities but present high technical barriers. Accessible, user-friendly tools like WoZ4U and Choregraphe lower those barriers but sacrifice cross-platform compatibility and longevity. Newer approaches such as VR-based frameworks attempt to bridge this gap, yet no existing tool successfully combines accessibility, flexibility, deployment portability, and built-in methodological rigor--meaning systematic features that guide experimenters toward best practices like standardized protocols, comprehensive logging, and reproducible experimental designs.
 
@@ -25,14 +25,14 @@ Moreover, few platforms directly address the methodological concerns raised by s
 
 This thesis represents the culmination of a multi-year research effort to develop infrastructure that addresses the challenges identified in the WoZ platform landscape. Based on the analysis of existing platforms and identified methodological gaps, I derived requirements for a modern WoZ research infrastructure. Through our preliminary work \cite{OConnor2024}, we identified six critical capabilities that a comprehensive platform should provide:
 
-\begin{enumerate}
+\begin{description}
 \item[R1:] \textbf{Integrated workflow.} All phases of the experimental workflow--design, execution, and analysis--should be integrated within a single unified environment to minimize context switching and tool fragmentation.
 \item[R2:] \textbf{Low technical barrier.} Creating interaction protocols should require minimal to no programming expertise, enabling domain experts from psychology, education, or other fields to work independently \cite{Bartneck2024}.
 \item[R3:] \textbf{Real-time control.} The system must support fine-grained, responsive real-time control during live experiment sessions across a variety of robotic platforms.
 \item[R4:] \textbf{Automated logging.} All actions, timings, and sensor data should be automatically logged with synchronized timestamps to facilitate analysis.
 \item[R5:] \textbf{Platform agnosticism.} The architecture should decouple experimental logic from robot-specific implementations, meaning experiments designed for one robot type can be adapted to others, ensuring the platform remains viable as hardware evolves.
 \item[R6:] \textbf{Collaborative support.} Multiple team members should be able to contribute to experiment design and review execution data, supporting truly interdisciplinary research.
-\end{enumerate}
+\end{description}
 
 To the best of my knowledge, no existing platform satisfies all six requirements. Most critically, the trade-off between accessibility and flexibility remains unresolved, and few tools embed methodological best practices directly into their design--like training wheels on a bicycle, guiding experimenters to follow sound methodology by default.