| Impact of classroom design on interactive whiteboard use in a special needs classroom | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-4 | |
| Grant Shannon; Sally Jo Cunningham | |||
| The physical environment of a classroom -- how space is organized and
controlled -- impacts the use of technology within that setting. This paper
presents the initial rationale for choosing an interactive whiteboard (IWB) as
the platform for software designed to encourage play in primary students with
Autism Spectrum Disorders. An observational study of normal classroom practice
and of an installed version of the software uncovered factors in the physical
installation of the IWB and its pedagogical use that negatively affect its
potential use. Keywords: classroom design, classroom environment, students with autism, untethered
learning environment | |||
| Mutuality: a key gap in the move to telecare | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 5-12 | |
| Hanif Baharin; Ralf Mühlberger; Andrew Loch | |||
| Telecare is thought to be a solution for the increasing healthcare cost of
an aging population. We want to identify possible issues in telecare
implementations to inform technology design. By analysing telecare literature
using the Locales Framework it was found that there is a gap in telecare
technology research in designing awareness or presence (known as the mutuality
aspect in the Locales Framework) between the elderly and their informal carers.
By designing a technology intervention on existing telecare architecture to
address this gap, it is speculated that telecare can reintroduce social contact
to the appropriate parties, i.e. family and friends, when professional contact
with visiting nurses is replaced by technology. Keywords: design research, locales framework, telecare | |||
| Behaviour characteristics: low and high literacy users information seeking on social service websites | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 13-16 | |
| Neesha Kodagoda; William Wong; Nawaz Kahan | |||
| This paper describes the behaviour characteristics of low and high literacy
users, information seeking of an on-line social service system. The finding of
this paper is based on the qualitative study which involves ten volunteers
participated in this study. To classify these participants within the literacy
scale, National Skills for Life Survey is used. According to this survey, five
volunteers are classified as high literate; and the remaining were as low
literate. All participants were asked to think-aloud whilst carrying out the
information search using the "Adviceguide" website. The four information search
tasks were of varying difficulty; easy, medium and difficult. Observations,
video recording and a semi-structured interview technique that use cognitive
probes were used. The qualitative data were transcribed and analysed using
Grounded Theory and Emergent Themes Analysis approach. The eight
characteristics of what identified; Verification, Reading, Recovery,
Trajectories, Focus, Satisfied, Representation and Abandon. Results showed that
low and high literacy users demonstrated critically different behaviour
characteristics. Keywords: information search task, information seeking characteristics, low & high
literacy users | |||
| Gaining entry to real settings with a bridging design prototype | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 17-20 | |
| Gloria Gomez | |||
| This paper introduces the Bridging Design Prototype (BDP) concept. A BDP is
the functional prototype of a new product that a user community can incorporate
into their activities, while a researcher uses it for observation and testing.
Due to limited research resources, the BDP was an outcome of adjusting the
principles of several user-centred design methods and a learning theory. These
principles where then applied to the development of a suitable product that
could be incorporated in real settings. Keywords: educational tools, inclusive design, participatory design, product
development, prototyping, user research, user-centred design | |||
| AIMHelp: generating help for GUI applications automatically | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 21-28 | |
| Yashasvi Appilla Chakravarthi; Christof Lutteroth; Gerald Weber | |||
| Help systems are a requirement in most modern applications. However, current
mainstream help systems can be improved to provide information that is more
relevant and accurate. This paper introduces a new approach for help systems --
AIMHelp -- that can generate help information from a running application.
Instead of developers having to supply all help information a-priori, a lot of
information can be retrieved by monitoring the state of the GUI and the
interaction between the user and different system components. This has the
advantage that generated help information is consistent with the actual
application, unlike pre-defined help information that can easily get outdated
as an application evolves. Keywords: automated help, context-sensitive help, dynamic help, explanation
strategies, reflection | |||
| Web 2.0: extending the framework for heuristic evaluation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 29-36 | |
| Ashleigh-Jane Thompson; Elizabeth A. Kemp | |||
| When creating web sites, as with any software product, it is important to
ensure that a high level of usability is attained. If sites are not usable,
users will leave and find others which better cater to their needs. As a
result, effective evaluation techniques are required to determine the usability
of web sites. Current techniques include the use of heuristic evaluations based
on criteria developed by Jakob Nielsen. There is little evidence to show
whether these traditional approaches are still appropriate for Web 2.0 sites.
This paper presents the findings from an evaluation of three Web 2.0 sites which involved both heuristic evaluation and user testing. The aim of these evaluations was to determine whether the results of the heuristic evaluation accurately reflected the users' experiences and opinions. The results from the heuristic evaluation indicated that each of the three sites failed in some respects. In contrast, the findings from the user testing showed that users found the sites easy and logical to use and believed that the needs of the users had thoroughly been taken into account during the design process. Keywords: heuristic evaluation, interface evaluation, usability testing, user
interface, web 2.0 | |||
| Introducing students to UI patterns | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 37-40 | |
| E. G. Todd; E. A. Kemp; C. P. Phillips | |||
| User interface (UI) patterns have the potential to assist students of Human
Computer Interaction (HCI) to learn about the principles of design. They can be
used to guide students developing a conceptual model of an interface. We
investigated how HCI students used a method for developing UI-pattern models
and ascertained their views on different pattern forms (illustrated and
narrative-only). Data was collected by observation, questionnaires and
completed exercises. The findings indicate that students found UI patterns an
acceptable medium for presenting UI information, were positive about their
experience building UI-pattern models, and that patterns aided communication. Keywords: conceptual models, patterns, user interface | |||
| The Wiimote with multiple sensor bars: creating an affordable, virtual reality controller | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 41-44 | |
| Torben Sko; Henry Gardner | |||
| A low-cost virtual-reality controller has been constructed from the Nintendo
Wii Remote using multiple sensor bars. An agent-based algorithm has been used
to allow the controller to move from one sensor bar to another, enabling it to
be used in a surround, multiple-screen environment. User testing has verified
that the system is suitable for use with a demanding, fast-paced,
first-person-shooter game. The tuned version of the system was found to have a
low error rate and to be favourably received by test participants. Our work has
been open-sourced to encourage further research in this area. Keywords: Wii remote, agents and intelligent systems, computer games, input and
interaction technology, sensor bar, virtual reality | |||
| Remotely shooting asteroids on our mobile phone | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 45-52 | |
| Vipul Delwadia; Stuart Marshall; Ian Welch | |||
| The New Zealand software industry developed numerous games and applications
during the last decades of the twentieth century. These games and applications
-- our digital culture -- are now becoming inaccessible and lost due to
preservation and copyright problems. Providing remote access on standard mobile
phones to centrally controlled and protected archives of old games and
applications may be one approach to overcoming some of the preservation and
copyright problems. However, remote access over wireless poses performance
problems that could negatively impact the experience of using the preserved
software, especially if the software is a computer game requiring immediate
responses to player actions. In this paper, we attempt to discover what time
performance requirements such a remote access system would need to satisfy by
experimenting with various time delays to see how players' scores and
perceptions of the game deteriorate. Keywords: games preservation, remote mobile gaming | |||
| A pen-tablet-orientation-pointing method for multi-monitors | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 53-60 | |
| Masaki Omata; Masahiro Kosaka; Atsumi Imamiya | |||
| This paper proposes a pen tablet orientation method for easily pointing
anywhere on the screen of one of several monitors in a multi-monitor setup.
With this method, a user selects the desired monitor by orienting a pen tablet
toward it and then pointing within it with a stylus. This allows the user to
similarly access the center and corners of a wide screen of multiple monitors
and avoids losing the cursor in such a widescreen setup. The system is
implemented with a pen tablet and a turntable and experiments are conducted to
compare it with mouse and conventional pen tablet pointing. The results show
that this method is more efficient and accurate than a conventional pen tablet
and as effective as a mouse. The proposed method is also expected to be more
efficient than a mouse once the user gets used to it. Keywords: large display, multiple-display environment, pen-tablet, pointing method | |||
| SmartList: exploring intelligent hand-written list support | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 61-64 | |
| Tao Wang; Beryl Plimmer | |||
| Here we report on SmartList our prototype for exploring essential features
for a handwritten list program. On a freeform list, a lot of information is
encoded in the layout and non-text ink: currently there is no effective
pen-based computer program to support this activity. Although modern
handwriting recognizers can achieve good recognition accuracy, this is not
sufficient to support list making. Our prototype and its evaluation are
presented in this paper. We identify accurate ink recognition as an essential
element for such intelligent pen-based systems. Keywords: digital ink, lists | |||
| The use of paper in everyday student life | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 65-68 | |
| David M. Nichols; Sally Jo Cunningham | |||
| The information we encounter in modern life, in developed countries, is a
hybrid of the physical and the digital. Personal archiving tools allow users to
capture and retrieve aspects of their everyday lives in digital form. In this
paper we use a diary study of students' interactions with paper-based
information to inform the design of such archiving tools. Keywords: diary study, paper, personal archiving | |||
| Personal document management strategies | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 69-76 | |
| Sarah Henderson | |||
| Personal document management describes the activities performed by an
individual in creating, acquiring, organizing and maintaining collections of
their documents. A study involving field studies and a survey of 115
participants was conducted in order to better understand the approaches people
take to document management. Qualitative analysis of a field study and
quantitative analysis of a survey were used together to develop a description
of three major approaches to personal document management: a piling strategy, a
filing strategy and a structuring strategy. A user persona was developed to
exemplify each strategy; this persona description can be used as a design tool
to guide the development of user interfaces for personal document management
system. Specific user interface guidelines are suggested to support each of the
three identified strategies. Keywords: document management strategy, personal document management, personal
information management, personas | |||
| An end-user evaluation of a lecture archiving system | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 77-80 | |
| Lyn Collie; Viral Shah; Don Sheridan | |||
| Lecture archiving and the provision of online access to it are becoming
increasingly ubiquitous in tertiary education and there is a growing body of
associated literature. However there is limited attention given to the implied
interaction between students, staff and the computing complex required to
create and serve recorded lectures online, or the different interests of the
human parties involved. This paper reviews HCI principles in the context of
current research on lecture archiving from the academic's, and student's
perspective. It then addresses findings from qualitative and quantitative
surveys of students' use of lecture archiving across six University of Auckland
Business School courses in Summer school 2009. Our experiences of a subsequent
deployment in Semester One of 2009 are also considered in conjunction with
relevant server log data. Interface, storage, retrieval and delivery issues are
addressed, along with their observed impact on student and staff uses of
archiving technology. Keywords: communications, lecture archiving, lecture recording, multimedia, video | |||
| Ambient environments for emotional physical communication | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 81-84 | |
| Michelle Li; He Jianting | |||
| This paper extends our understanding of existing physical and gestural
interfaces and presents a potential design space in affective computing using
human movement as a form of emotionally expressive interaction across physical
distances. We discuss a conceptual design in which emotive, non-verbal modes of
social collaboration can facilitate remote communication over networked
intelligent environments. Exploring this idea for such an interaction can help
us consider future contexts in facilitating more expressive and communicative
human-human interaction. Keywords: ambient intelligence, communication, emotion, physical movement, tangible
interfaces, user experience | |||
| User evaluation and overview of a visual language for real time image processing on FPGAs | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 85-92 | |
| C. T. Johnston; P. Lyons; D. G. Bailey | |||
| FPGAs are often used for image processing, but existing FPGA design tools
lack syntactic constructs for some specialized activities that are important in
this field, such as timing, resource handling and scheduling. This forces the
developer to work at too low a level and makes it difficult to produce a
genuinely hierarchically decomposed design.
This paper outlines these deficiencies, as the background for an overview of and justification for each of three views in VERTIPH, a visual programming language for defining image processing algorithms on FPGAs. This updates the overview presented in [1]. The paper then presents the results of two user evaluations of VERTIPH, a pre-implementation paper-based user evaluation which found no major changes were required and a post-(partial)-implementation user evaluation. The latter evaluated the novel parts of the language using participants experienced in the field. The key parts of VERTIPH were found to be useful visualisations for the developers, and the only major problem was the interaction required for defining type-connections between views. Keywords: FPGA, HDL, image processing, visual programming language | |||
| Visual intelligence density: definition, measurement, and implementation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 93-100 | |
| Xiaoyan Bai; David White; David Sundaram | |||
| Advanced visualization systems have been widely adopted by decision makers
for dealing with problems involving spatial, temporal and multi-dimensional
features. While these systems tend to provide reasonable support for particular
paradigms, domains, and data types, they are very weak when it comes to
supporting multi-paradigm, multi-domain problems that deal with complex
spatio-temporal multi-dimensional data. This has led to visualizations that are
context insensitive, data dense, and sparse in intelligence. There is a crucial
need for visualizations that capture the essence of the relevant information in
limited visual spaces allowing decision makers to take better decisions with
less effort and time. To address these problems and issues, we propose a visual
decision making process that increases the intelligence density of information
provided by visualizations. To support this we propose a mechanism by which one
could judge the intelligence density of visualizations. Furthermore, we propose
and implement a framework and architecture to support the above process in a
manner that is independent of data, domain, and paradigm. The system allows
decision makers to create, manipulate, layer and view visualizations flexibly
enabling the increase in the density of intelligence that they provide. Keywords: decision making, implementation, information visualization, information
visualization systems, intelligence density, measurement | |||
| Living with the sound of the past: experiencing sonic atomic interaction using the sound diary | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 101-104 | |
| Hanif Baharin; Ralf Mühlberger | |||
| This paper proposes a new interaction paradigm, atomic interaction, that
aims at creating and maintaining contact without the transmission of content
beyond the fact that an interaction is occurring. Atomic interactions can be
represented using sound, which we term sonic atomic interaction. Since this is
a new application of sonification, a prototype called the Sound Diary was
created to simulate sonic atomic interaction for a pilot trial study. The
experience of living with the Sound Diary is described in this paper from the
first author point of view. The lessons learned from the experience are
discussed in the light of previous literature. It was found that auditory icons
can be easily confused for environmental sounds, and that dead metaphor sound
may reduce confusion and startled reactions if auditory icons are to be used in
unattended devices. Keywords: atomic interaction, auditory icons, earcons, first-person research, sonic
atomic interaction, sonification | |||
| Trails of experiences: navigating personal memories | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 105-106 | |
| Andrea Schweer; Steve Jones; Annika Hinze | |||
| Systems to augment personal information aim to support people in remembering
both past experiences and specific information associated with past
experiences. These types of information go beyond those supported in systems
for Personal Information Management, making it necessary to develop new user
interface and interaction techniques. Our approach is based on characteristics
of human memory. Its major contribution is the combination of a graph-based
data model with navigation mechanisms based on various types of context and on
associations. Keywords: autobiographical memory, context-awareness, personal information management | |||