| Component-based tailorability: Enabling highly flexible software applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 1-22 | |
| Volker Wulf; Volkmar Pipek; Markus Won | |||
| Component technologies are perceived as an important means to keep software
architectures flexible. Flexibility offered by component technologies typically
addresses software developers at design time. However, the design of software
which should support social systems, such as work groups or communities, also
demands 'use-time', or technically spoken, 'run-time' flexibility. In this
paper, we summarize a decade of research efforts on component-based approaches
to flexibilize groupware applications at run-time. We address the user as a
'casual programmer' who develops and individualizes software for his work
context. To deal with the challenges of run-time flexibility, we developed a
design approach which covers three levels: software architecture, user
interface, and collaboration support. With regard to the software architecture,
a component model, called FlexiBeans, has been developed. The FreEvolve
platform serves as an environment in which component-based applications can be
tailored at run-time. Additionally, we have developed three different types of
graphical user interfaces, enabling users to tailor their applications by
recomposing components. To enable collaborative tailoring activities, we have
integrated functions that allow sharing component structures among users. We
also present different types of support techniques which are integrated into
the user interface in order to enable users' individual and collaborative
tailoring activities. We conclude by elaborating on the notion of 'software
infrastructure' which offers a holistic approach to support design activities
of professional and non-professional programmers. Keywords: Tailorability / End user development / Component-based systems / CSCW | |||
| Haptic-feedback support for cognitive mapping of unknown spaces by people who are blind | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 23-35 | |
| O. Lahav; D. Mioduser | |||
| Mental mapping of spaces is essential for the development of efficient
orientation and mobility skills. Most of the information required for this
mental mapping is gathered through the visual channel. People who are blind
lack this information, and in consequence, they are required to use
compensatory sensorial channels and alternative exploration methods. In this
study, people who are blind use a virtual environment (VE) that provides haptic
and audio feedback to explore an unknown space. The cognitive mapping of the
space based on the VE and the subject's ability to apply this map to accomplish
tasks in the real space are examined. Results show clearly that a robust and
comprehensive map is constructed, contributing to successful performance in
real space tasks. Keywords: Blind / Cognitive mapping / Orientation rehabilitation / Haptic / Virtual
reality | |||
| A social network-based system for supporting interactive collaboration in knowledge sharing over peer-to-peer network | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 36-50 | |
| Stephen J. H. Yang; Irene Y. L. Chen | |||
| Knowledge sharing enables people in virtual communities to access relevant
knowledge (explicit or tacit) from broader scope of resources. The performance
in such environments is fundamentally based on how effectively the explicit and
tacit knowledge can be shared across people, and how efficiently the created
knowledge can be organized and disseminated to enrich digital content. This
study will address how to apply social network-based system to support
interactive collaboration in knowledge sharing over peer-to-peer networks.
Results of this study demonstrate that applying such social network-based
collaboration support to knowledge sharing helps people find relevant content
and knowledgeable collaborators who are willing to share their knowledge. Keywords: Social network / Interactive collaboration / Knowledge sharing /
Peer-to-peer / Instant messenger | |||
| Organizing domain-specific information on the Web: An experiment on the Spanish business Web directory | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 51-66 | |
| Wingyan Chung; Guanpi Lai; Alfonso Bonillas; Wei Xi; Hsinchun Chen | |||
| Web directories organize voluminous information into hierarchical
structures, helping users to quickly locate relevant information and to support
decision-making. The development of existing ontologies and Web directories
either relies on expert participation that may not be available or uses
automatic approaches that lack precision. As more users access the Web in their
native languages, better approaches to organizing and developing non-English
Web directories are needed. In this paper, we have proposed a semi-automatic
framework, which consists of anchor directory boosting, meta-searching, and
heuristic filtering, to construct domain-specific Web directories. Using the
framework, we have built a Web directory in the Spanish business (SBiz) domain.
Experimental results show that the SBiz Web directory achieved significantly
better recall, F-value, efficiency, and satisfaction rating than the benchmark
directory. Subjects provided favorable comments on the SBiz Web directory. This
research thus contributes to developing a useful framework for organizing
domain-specific information on the Web and to providing empirical findings and
useful insights for end-users, system developers, and researchers of Web
information seeking and knowledge management. Keywords: Internet / Web / Browsing / Ontology / Business intelligence / Spanish /
Non-English Web browsing / Knowledge management | |||
| Applying models of visual search to map display design | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 67-77 | |
| Joshua Shive; Gregory Francis | |||
| We explored how to use a computational model of visual search to design a
map of a mall directory. We parameterized the Guided Search model [Wolfe, J.M.,
1994. Guided Search 2.0: a revised model of visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin
and Review 1(2), 202-238] for a task involving visual search of a target store
in a map. The resulting model was then used to choose color assignments for all
the elements of the display that would result in the fastest average search
time for the display and search tasks. These predicted optimized color
assignments were then tested empirically. The empirical data closely matched
the predicted pattern of search times. We conclude that computational models of
visual search are sophisticated enough to contribute to the development of
optimized map designs, discuss some limitations of the current models, and
suggest directions for further development. Keywords: Visual search / Map design / Guided Search / Human-computer interaction /
Optimization | |||
| Navigation techniques for small-screen devices: An evaluation on maps and web pages | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 78-97 | |
| Stefano Burigat; Luca Chittaro; Silvia Gabrielli | |||
| Several techniques have been proposed to support user navigation of large
information spaces (e.g., maps or web pages) on small-screen devices such as
PDAs and Smartphones. In this paper, we present the results of an evaluation
that compared three of these techniques to determine how they might affect
performance and satisfaction of users. Two of the techniques are quite common
on mobile devices: the first one (DoubleScrollbar) is the standard combination
of two scrollbars for separate horizontal and vertical scrolling with zoom
buttons to change the scale of the information space, the second one
(Grab&Drag) enables users to navigate the information space by directly
dragging its currently displayed portion, while zooming is handled through a
slider control. The last technique (Zoom-Enhanced Navigator or ZEN) is an
extension and adaptation to mobile screens of Overview&Detail approaches,
which are based on displaying an overview of the information space together
with a detail view of a portion of that space. In these approaches, navigation
is usually supported by (i) highlighting in the overview which portion of space
is displayed in the detail view, and (ii) allowing users to move the highlight
within the overview area to change the corresponding portion of space in the
detail area. Our experimental evaluation concerned tasks involving maps as well
as web page navigation. The paper analyzes in detail the obtained results in
terms of task completion times, number and duration of user interface actions,
accuracy of the gained spatial knowledge, and subjective preferences. Keywords: Small-screen devices / Navigation techniques / User study / Mobile
interaction | |||
| The politeness effect: Pedagogical agents and learning outcomes | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 98-112 | |
| Ning Wang; W. Lewis Johnson; Richard E. Mayer; Paola Rizzo; Erin Shaw; Heather Collins | |||
| Pedagogical agent research seeks to exploit Reeves and Nass's media equation
theory, which holds that users respond to interactive media as if they were
social actors. Investigations have tended to focus on the media used to realize
the pedagogical agent, e.g., the use of animated talking heads and voices, and
the results have been mixed. This paper focuses instead on the manner in which
a pedagogical agent communicates with learners, i.e., on the extent to which it
exhibits social intelligence. A model of socially intelligent tutorial dialog
was developed based on politeness theory, and implemented in an agent interface
within an online learning system called virtual factory teaching system. A
series of Wizard-of-Oz studies was conducted in which subjects either received
polite tutorial feedback that promotes learner face and mitigates face threat,
or received direct feedback that disregards learner face. The polite version
yielded better learning outcomes, and the effect was amplified in learners who
expressed a preference for indirect feedback, who had less computer experience,
and who lacked engineering backgrounds. These results confirm the hypothesis
that learners tend to respond to pedagogical agents as social actors, and
suggest that research should focus less on the media in which agents are
realized, and place more emphasis on the agent's social intelligence. Keywords: Politeness / Politeness effect / Pedagogical agent / Intelligent tutoring
system | |||
| A usability comparison of three alternative message formats for an SMS banking service | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 113-123 | |
| G. Peevers; G. Douglas; M. A. Jack | |||
| The study reported here compares the usability of three types of message
input format: Abbreviations, Numbers and Free-Form as alternatives for a Pull
SMS banking service. Participants (N=74) used all three formats to carry out
three banking transactions in a repeated measures experiment. The Abbreviations
and Numbers versions of the service performed to generally equal levels in all
metrics. Free-Form performed the worst as participants took significantly
longer to complete tasks and it received significantly lower overall
questionnaire and quality scores for satisfaction. The older age group found
all three versions in general to be less usable than the younger age group.
They took longer on the tasks, had lower completion rates and they also gave
each version a lower overall mean satisfaction score. Keywords: SMS / Text messaging / Mobile banking / Handheld devices / Usability testing | |||
| Designing and evaluating driver support systems with the user in mind | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 125-131 | |
| Pierre Fastrez; Jean-Baptiste Haué | |||
| In this editorial to the special issue we first introduce the field of
driver support system (DSS) design and evaluation, frame it into the larger
context of human-computer interaction research, and highlight some of its
specificities. We then proceed to briefly present the selection of articles
that compose this issue. Finally, we put the contributions to the special issue
into perspective along a number of dimensions to show how they represent the
diversity of current DSS research. Keywords: Driver support systems / Driver-centered design / Evaluation / Editorial | |||
| Do in-vehicle advanced signs enhance older and younger drivers' intersection performance? Driving simulation and eye movement results | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 132-144 | |
| J. K. Caird; S. L. Chisholm; J. Lockhart | |||
| An experimental study was conducted to determine if intersection behaviour
benefited from advanced in-vehicle signs presented to older and younger drivers
in a head-up display (HUD) format. The University of Calgary Driving Simulator
(UCDS) was used to evaluate intersection performance. Measures of those who
were able to stop or ran the yellow light, speed over the span of the
intersection, perception response time, and eye movements were analyzed to
determine if performance improved or whether undesirable adaptive behaviours
occurred. In-vehicle signs facilitated an increase in the frequencies of
stopping for both younger and older drivers at intersections with relatively
short yellow onsets. The speed at the yellow light onset for both those who
stopped and those who proceeded through the intersection was reduced by the
presence of the in-vehicle signs. The primary behavioral influence of the
in-vehicle signs was to cause the drivers' to reduce their velocity in advance
of an intersection. Eye movement analyses indicated that younger drivers looked
at the in-vehicles signs more often and for longer overall durations than older
drivers. Older drivers had slower intersection approach speeds, stopped more
accurately, and were more likely to not clear the intersection before the
traffic light turned to an all-red phase than younger drivers. The implications
of the in-vehicle sign results are discussed in terms of in-vehicle information
systems (IVIS) design guidelines and evaluation methods. Keywords: In-vehicle signs / Older and younger drivers / Intersection performance /
Driving simulation / Eye movements | |||
| A visual sign of lateral acceleration for steering assistance | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 145-157 | |
| Isabelle Milleville-Pennel | |||
| This work examines whether it is possible to compensate for the loss of
vestibular information that is usually felt by drivers of modern cars when
negotiating bends and which is associated with the load transfer of the car.
Indeed, the absence of this information causes drivers to underestimate their
speed and consequently increases the risk of road departure. This study tries
to visually compensate for this loss of vestibular information through a tilt
movement of the frame of reference of the driver. This tilt is the same as that
perceived in a bend because of the load transfer of the car. The results
indicate that most participants are influenced by this visual information and
modify their speed accordingly whilst taking a bend. Nevertheless, only those
participants uninformed about the presence of this assistance did slow down,
whereas informed participants accelerated. This effect has been interpreted as
a consequence of the level of processing implicated in the steering task
(implicit versus explicit processing). Keywords: Visual and kinaesthetic information / Steering assistance / Perception of
lateral acceleration | |||
| An empirical investigation of a dynamic brake light concept for reduction of rear-end collisions through manipulation of optical looming | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 158-172 | |
| Zhonghai Li; Paul Milgram | |||
| The concept of dynamically manipulating the optical looming cues of a lead
vehicle's brake lights is investigated as a means of potentially reducing the
frequency of rear-end collisions in automobile driving. In a low-fidelity
driving simulator, 40 participants were instructed to follow a leading vehicle
(LV) and appropriately respond to braking of the LV, under three visibility
conditions: day, night-time with following vehicle (FV) headlights, and
night-time without FV headlights. During some LV braking events, separation and
size of the brake lights of the LV were expanded or contracted, by a nominally
imperceptible amount, to simulate an effective virtual time shift in the
headway of the LV. Results show that this manipulation was most effective for
very poor visibility conditions: at night with no headlights, for which LV
brake lights were most salient. When confronting a LV with expanding or
contracting brake lights, subjects generally braked sooner or later
respectively, in comparison with the no manipulation case. The concept shows
some promise for causing drivers to brake sooner in emergencies. Keywords: Optical looming / Rear-end collision / Emergency braking / Dynamic brake
lights | |||
| Driver safety and information from afar: An experimental driving simulator study of wireless vs. in-car information services | | BIBA | Full-Text | Full-Text | 173-184 | |
| Leila Takayama; Clifford Nass | |||
| Cars have changed from pure transportation devices to fully interactive, voice-based systems. While voice interaction in the car has previously required on-board processing, the growing speed and ubiquity of wireless technologies now enable interaction with a distant source. Will the perceived source of the information influence driver safety, responses to the information, and attitudes toward the computer system and car? A between-participants experimental design (N=40) of computer proximity -- in-car vs. wireless -- using an advanced car simulator, found that people's driving behavior, verbal responsiveness, and attitudes are affected by computer proximity. A path analysis shows two counterbalancing effects of computer proximity on driving behavior: drivers feel more engaged with the in-car system than the wireless system, which leads to safer driving behavior; however, drivers also drive faster while using the in-car system than the wireless system, which leads to more dangerous driving behavior. Consistent with greater feelings of engagement with the in-car system, people also feel less discontentment with the in-car system and self-disclose more to the in-car system. Positive perceptions of information content also lead drivers to be more persuaded by driving recommendations. Implications for the design of wireless systems are explored. | |||
| The role of intervening variables in driver-ACC cooperation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 185-197 | |
| Bako Rajaonah; Nicolas Tricot; Françoise Anceaux; Patrick Millot | |||
| This paper analyzes the behavior of drivers using Adaptive Cruise Control
(ACC) within the theoretical framework of Human-Machine Cooperation. The study
was carried out on a driving simulator. Driving task performance data and
responses to a trust questionnaire were analyzed in order to examine the
relationship between driver reliance on ACC and such intervening variables as
trust, perceived workload and perceived risk. The participants were divided a
posteriori into two groups according to their use of the ACC device during the
experimental run. The results show that high-use drivers seemed to cooperate
more with ACC than low-use drivers, who tended to perceive more risk and a
higher workload. These findings are discussed in the light of Riley's theory of
operator reliance on automation. Keywords: Adaptive Cruise Control / Cooperation / Use of automation / Intervening
variables / Driving simulator / Questionnaire | |||
| Iterative design of MOVE: A situationally appropriate vehicle navigation system | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 198-215 | |
| Joonhwan Lee; Jodi Forlizzi; Scott E. Hudson | |||
| Drivers need assistance when navigating an unfamiliar route. In-vehicle
navigation systems have improved in recent years due to the technology
advances, but are sometimes problematic because of information overload while
driving. To address the attentional demands of reading a map while driving, we
have developed the maps optimized for vehicular environments (MOVE) in-car
navigation display, which provides situationally appropriate navigation
information to the driver through optimization of map information. In this
paper, we describe the iterative design and evaluation process that shaped the
MOVE system. We describe early map reading and navigation studies that led to
early designs for our system. We present a study on visual search tasks that
refined the renditions used for the system. Finally, we present a study on the
effectiveness of several variations of a contextually optimized route map
visualization with a desktop steering system. The result of this study shows
that MOVE's contextually optimized navigation information can reduce the
driver's perceptual load significantly. Our laboratory experiment shows that
the total map display fixation time was decreased six-fold, and the number of
glances to interpret the map display were decreased about threefold, when
comparing the contextually optimized display to a static display. Keywords: Maps / In-car navigation systems / Visualization / Human attention /
Perceptual optimization / Dynamic displays | |||
| Cue effectiveness in mitigating postcompletion errors in a routine procedural task | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 217-232 | |
| Phillip H. Chung; Michael D. Byrne | |||
| Postcompletion errors, which are omissions of actions required after the
completion of a task's main goal, occur in a variety of everyday procedural
tasks. Previous research has demonstrated the difficulty of reducing their
frequency by means other than redesigning the task structure [Byrne, M.D.,
Davis, E.M., 2006. Task structure and postcompletion error in the execution of
a routine procedure. Human Factors 48, 627-638]. Nevertheless, finding a
successful strategy for mitigation of this type of error may uncover important
mechanisms underlying interactive behavior. Two experiments were carried out to
test visual cues for their ability to reduce the frequency of postcompletion
errors in a computer-based routine procedural task. A cue that was visually
salient, just-in-time, and meaningful entirely eliminated the error, whereas
cues that were not as specific were ineffective. These results are beyond the
predictive capability of extant error identification methods and common design
guidelines but are consistent with the work of Altmann and Trafton [2002.
Memory for goals: an activation-based model. Cognitive Science 26, 39-83] and
Hollnagel [1993. Human Reliability Analysis, Context and Control. Academic
Press, London]. Finally, a computational model developed in ACT-R is presented
as a first step towards validation of the major findings from the two
experiments. Keywords: Postcompletion error / Human error / Interface design / Modeling / ACT-R /
Cognitive architecture / Routine procedural task / Error mitigation / Error
intervention / Visual cue / Visual attention / Visual salience / Goal memory | |||
| The effect of dynamics on identifying basic emotions from synthetic and natural faces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 233-242 | |
| Jari Kätsyri; Mikko Sams | |||
| The identification of basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness,
sadness and surprise) has been studied widely from pictures of facial
expressions. Until recently, the role of dynamic information in identifying
facial emotions has received little attention. There is evidence that dynamics
improves the identification of basic emotions from synthetic
(computer-animated) facial expressions [Wehrle, T., Kaiser, S., Schmidt, S.,
Scherer, K.R., 2000. Studying dynamic models of facial expression of emotion
using synthetic animated faces. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78
(1), 105-119.]; however, similar result has not been confirmed with natural
human faces. We compared the identification of basic emotions from both natural
and synthetic dynamic vs. static facial expressions in 54 subjects. We found no
significant differences in the identification of static and dynamic expressions
from natural faces. In contrast, some synthetic dynamic expressions were
identified much more accurately than static ones. This effect was evident only
with synthetic facial expressions whose static displays were non-distinctive.
Our results show that dynamics does not improve the identification of already
distinctive static facial displays. On the other hand, dynamics has an
important role for identifying subtle emotional expressions, particularly from
computer-animated synthetic characters. Keywords: Facial animation / Basic emotions / Movement perception | |||
| A multiscale progressive model on virtual navigation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 243-256 | |
| Xiaolong Zhang | |||
| Navigation designs in virtual environments often draw on research findings
on human navigation behaviors in the real world, in particular the
landmark-route-survey spatial knowledge model. Geographers and cognitive
psychologists have argued that this model is insufficient to capture the
complexity of spatial cognition related to navigation. They have suggested that
new theories are needed to understand the integration of various kinds of
spatial knowledge and their relationship with spatial activities, such as route
planning, route choosing and so on. In virtual environments, users can scale up
and down the virtual space to obtain different spatial knowledge and
interaction domains. Such flexibility offers an opportunity to deepen our
understanding of the relationship between spatial knowledge and spatial action.
This paper reports a study on how scaling in virtual environments can improve
the integration of spatial knowledge and spatial action. This paper first
proposes a multiscale progressive model that couples spatial knowledge and
movement across scale in navigation in virtual environments. Then, the paper
introduces the design of multiscale environments to support the coupling.
Results of an experimental study show the benefits of the coupled spatial
knowledge and movement for navigation involving subtasks at different scale
levels. In addition to helping better understand the relationship between
spatial knowledge and spatial action, this research also gives some insight
into designs to support navigation in virtual environments as well as designs
to support cross-scale spatial knowledge access in the real world. Keywords: Navigation / Virtual environments / Multiscale / Spatial knowledge | |||
| Beyond web content accessibility guidelines: Design of enhanced text user interfaces for blind internet users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 257-270 | |
| Stefan Leuthold; Javier A. Bargas-Avila; Klaus Opwis | |||
| Websites do not become usable just because their content is accessible. For
people who are blind, the application of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) often might not even make a significant difference in terms
of efficiency, errors or satisfaction in website usage. This paper documents
the development of nine guidelines to construct an enhanced text user interface
(ETI) as an alternative to the graphical user interface (GUI). An experimental
design with 39 blind participants executing a search and a navigation task on a
website showed that with the ETI, blind users executed the search task
significantly faster, committing fewer mistakes, rating it significantly better
on subjective scales as well as when compared to the GUIs from other websites
they had visited. However, performance did not improve with the ETI on the
navigation task, the main reason presumed to be labeling problems. We conclude
that the ETI is an improvement over the GUI, but that it cannot help in
overcoming one major weakness of most websites: If users do not understand
navigation labels, even the best user interface cannot help them navigate. Keywords: Accessibility / Blind users / Graphical user interface / Interface for the
blind / Screenreader / Text interface / Usability for the blind / User
interface / WAI / WCAG | |||
| Extending Ecological Interface Design principles: A manufacturing case study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 271-286 | |
| Connor Upton; Gavin Doherty | |||
| Identifying information requirements is a well-understood activity, but the
practice of converting data into visual form based on these requirements is
less defined. The Ecological Interface Design (EID) framework attempts to
bridge this design gap by offering a set of visual design principles. While
these principles supply high-level goals to be achieved by the display, they do
not describe the design process per se. EID case studies tend to report the
work domain analysis, the design solution and the relationship between these
two artefacts. Unfortunately, the presentation of a final solution does not
reveal the rationale for decisions made during the design process. This,
coupled with the complexity of the systems involved, can make it difficult to
transfer design knowledge to other work domains. Here a methodology is proposed
to guide the design of visual interface components that make up an ecological
display. A structured approach for matching requirements to visual form based
on work domain analysis, task analysis, scale matching, and data
transformations is presented. A case study reveals the rationale behind the
redesign of a process control health reporting system using this methodology. Keywords: Visual design / Ecological Interface Design / Decision support | |||
| Semi-public end-user content contributions -- A case-study of concerns and intentions in online photo-sharing | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 287-300 | |
| Jörgen Skågeby | |||
| As social networks and rich media sharing are increasingly converging,
end-user concerns regarding to whom, how and why to direct a certain digital
content emerge. Between the pure private contribution and the pure public
contribution exists a large research and design space of semi-public content
and relationships. The theoretical framework of gift-giving correlates to
semi-public contributions in that it envelopes social relationships, concerns
for others and reciprocity, and was consequently adopted in order to reveal and
classify qualitative semi-public end-user concerns with content contribution.
The data collection was performed through online ethnographic methods in a
large photo-sharing network. The main data-collection method used was forum
message elicitation, combined with referential methods such as interviews and
application observation and usage. The analysis of data resulted in
descriptions concerning end-user intentions to address dynamic recipient
groupings, the intentions to control the level of publicness of both digital
content and its related social metadata (tags, contacts, comments and links to
other networks) and the conclusion that users often refrained from providing
material unless they felt able to control its direction. Keywords: Rich social networks / Multimedia content / Online ethnography / Flickr /
Gift-giving / Social metadata | |||
| Real-time classification of evoked emotions using facial feature tracking and physiological responses | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 303-317 | |
| Jeremy N. Bailenson; Emmanuel D. Pontikakis; Iris B. Mauss; James J. Gross; Maria E. Jabon; Cendri A. C. Hutcherson; Clifford Nass; Oliver John | |||
| We present automated, real-time models built with machine learning
algorithms which use videotapes of subjects' faces in conjunction with
physiological measurements to predict rated emotion (trained coders'
second-by-second assessments of sadness or amusement). Input consisted of
videotapes of 41 subjects watching emotionally evocative films along with
measures of their cardiovascular activity, somatic activity, and electrodermal
responding. We built algorithms based on extracted points from the subjects'
faces as well as their physiological responses. Strengths of the current
approach are (1) we are assessing real behavior of subjects watching emotional
videos instead of actors making facial poses, (2) the training data allow us to
predict both emotion type (amusement versus sadness) as well as the intensity
level of each emotion, (3) we provide a direct comparison between
person-specific, gender-specific, and general models. Results demonstrated good
fits for the models overall, with better performance for emotion categories
than for emotion intensity, for amusement ratings than sadness ratings, for a
full model using both physiological measures and facial tracking than for
either cue alone, and for person-specific models than for gender-specific or
general models. Keywords: Affective computing / Facial tracking / Emotion / Computer vision | |||
| A user study of auditory versus visual interfaces for use while driving | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 318-332 | |
| Jaka Sodnik; Christina Dicke; Saso Tomazic; Mark Billinghurst | |||
| This paper describes a user study on interaction with a mobile device
installed in a driving simulator. Two new auditory interfaces were proposed and
their effectiveness and efficiency were compared to a standard visual
interface. Both auditory interfaces consisted of spatialized auditory cues
representing individual items in the hierarchical structure of the menu. In the
first auditory interface all items of the current level of the menu were played
simultaneously. In the second auditory interface only one item was played at a
time. The visual interface was shown on a small in-vehicle LCD screen on the
dashboard. In all three cases, a custom-made interaction device (a scrolling
wheel and two buttons) attached to the steering wheel was used for controlling
the interface. The driving performance, task completion times, perceived
workload and overall user satisfaction were evaluated. The experiment proved
that both auditory interfaces were effective to use in a mobile environment,
but were not faster than the visual interface. In the case of shorter tasks,
e.g. changing the active profile or deleting an image, the task completion
times were comparable for all interfaces; however, both the driving performance
was significantly better and the perceived workload was lower when using the
auditory interfaces. The test subjects also reported a high overall
satisfaction with the auditory interfaces. The latter were labelled as easier
to use, more satisfying and more adequate for performing the required tasks
than the visual interface. The results of the survey are not surprising as
there is a stronger competition for the visual attention between the visual
interface and the primary task (driving the car) than in the case of using the
auditory interface. So although both types of interfaces were proven to be
effective, the visual interface was less efficient as it strongly distracted
the user from performing the primary task. Keywords: Visual interface / Auditory interface / Spatial sound / Driving simulator /
Mobile device / Interaction / Distraction | |||
| Designing haptic icons to support collaborative turn-taking | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 333-355 | |
| Andrew Chan; Karon MacLean; Joanna McGrenere | |||
| This paper describes research exploring the use of haptics to support users
collaborating remotely in a single-user shared application. Mediation of
turn-taking during remote collaboration provides a context to explore haptic
affordances for background communication as well as control negotiation in
remote collaboration: existing turn-taking protocols are rudimentary, lacking
many communication cues available in face-to-face collaboration. We therefore
designed a custom turn-taking protocol that allows users to express different
levels of urgency in their request for control from a collaborator; state of
control and requests are communicated by touch, with the intent of offloading
visual attention. To support it, we developed a set of haptic icons, tangible
stimuli to which specific meanings have been assigned. Because we required an
icon set which could be utilized with specified, varying levels of
intrusiveness in real attentionally challenged situations, we used a
perceptually guided procedure that consisted of four steps: initial icon set
design, perceptual refinement, validation of learnability and effectiveness
under workload, and deployment in an application simulation. We found that our
haptic icons could be learned to a high degree of accuracy in under 3 min
and remained identifiable even under significant cognitive workload. In an
exploratory observational study comparing haptic, visual, and combined haptic
and visual support for our protocol, participants overall preferred the
combined multi-modal support, and in particular preferred the haptic support
for control changes and the visual support for displaying state. In their
control negotiation, users clearly utilized the option of requesting with
graded urgency. The three major contributions in this paper are: (1) the
introduction and first case study using a systematic process for refining and
evaluating haptic icons for background communication in a primarily visual
application; (2) the usability observed for a particular set of icons designed
with that process; and (3) the introduction of an urgency-based turn-taking
protocol and a comparison of haptic, visual and multi-modal support of our
implementation of that protocol. Keywords: Haptic icons / Turn-taking / Remote collaboration / Background communication
/ Signaling / Workload / Design process | |||
| An empirical examination of factors contributing to the creation of successful e-learning environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 356-369 | |
| Richard D. Johnson; Steven Hornik; Eduardo Salas | |||
| Although existing models of e-learning effectiveness in information systems
(IS) have increased our understanding of how technology can support and enhance
learning, most of our models do not take into account the importance of social
presence. Thus, this study extends previous research by developing a model of
e-learning effectiveness which adds social presence to other oft studied
variables including application-specific computer self-efficacy (AS-CSE),
perceived usefulness, course interaction, and e-learning effectiveness. Using
data from 345 individuals, this model was validated through a field study in an
introductory IS survey course. Results indicate that AS-CSE and perceived
usefulness were related to course performance, course satisfaction, and course
instrumentality. In addition, course interaction was related to course
performance and satisfaction. Finally, social presence was related to course
satisfaction and course instrumentality. Implications for research and practice
are discussed. Keywords: e-learning / Social presence / Perceived usefulness / Computer self-efficacy
/ Learning outcomes / Learning transfer / Causal models | |||
| Interactions of perceptual and conceptual processing: Expertise in medical image diagnosis | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 370-390 | |
| Junya Morita; Kazuhisa Miwa; Takayuki Kitasaka; Kensaku Mori; Yasuhito Suenaga; Shingo Iwano; Mitsuru Ikeda; Takeo Ishigaki | |||
| In this study, we selected medical image diagnosis as a task to investigate
how expertise influences the relations between perceptual and conceptual
processing. In an experiment, participants, namely five novices and five
experts, made diagnoses on 13 CT images. We obtained two types of data
concerning verbal protocols and manipulating computational systems. The
segments related to perceptual and conceptual processing were extracted from
these data, and the interrelations of the two components were analyzed.
Consequently, we confirmed three salient features in the experts: (1) the
experts verbalized more types of findings and more types of hypotheses than
novices; (2) the experts generated several hypotheses in the early phases of
the task; and (3) they newly verbalized many perceptual features during
conceptual activities, and verbalized conceptual words during perceptual
activities. These results suggest that expertise in medical image diagnosis
involves not only the development of both perceptual and conceptual processing,
but also the development of an ability to connect the two components. Keywords: Cognitive experiment / Expertise / Protocol analysis / Medical image
diagnosis | |||
| Retraction notice to "Key factors of heuristic evaluation for game design: Towards massively multi-player online role-playing game" [Int. J. Human-Computer Studies 65 (2007) 709-723] | | BIBA | Full-Text | Full-Text | 391 | |
| Seungkeun Song; Joohyeon Lee | |||
| This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors-in-Chief. Reason: It has come to the attention of the Editors-in-Chief of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies that this article is highly congruent to the previously published work of J. P. Davis, K. Steury, R. Pagulayan, "A survey method for assessing perceptions of a game: The consumer playtest in game design", Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Research, vol. 5, issue 1 (2005). The Editors have asked Elsevier to retract the Song and Lee article for the following reason: a substantial part of the literature review (Section 2.1) contains extracted passages without quotes or sufficient changes to the original text and lacks the necessary acknowledgement in the reference section. This article has been retracted consistent with Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy). The publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. | |||
| Evaluating system utility and conceptual fit using CASSM | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 393-409 | |
| Ann Blandford; Thomas R. G. Green; Dominic Furniss; Stephann Makri | |||
| There is a wealth of user-centred evaluation methods (UEMs) to support the
analyst in assessing interactive systems. Many of these support detailed
aspects of use -- for example: is the feedback helpful? Are labels appropriate?
Is the task structure optimal? Few UEMs encourage the analyst to step back and
consider how well a system supports users' conceptual understandings and system
utility. In this paper, we present CASSM, a method, which focuses on the
quality of 'fit' between users and an interactive system. We describe the
methodology of conducting a CASSM analysis and illustrate the approach with
three contrasting worked examples (a robotic arm, a digital library system and
a drawing tool) that demonstrate different depths of analysis. We show how
CASSM can help identify re-design possibilities to improve system utility.
CASSM complements established evaluation methods by focusing on conceptual
structures rather than procedures. Prototype tool support for completing a
CASSM analysis is provided by Cassata, an open source development. Keywords: CASSM / Usability evaluation methods / Conceptual structures / Co-evolution | |||
| Uncertainty-tolerant design: Evaluating task performance and drag-and-link information gathering for a news-writing task | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 410-424 | |
| Simon Attfield; Ann Blandford; John Dowell; Paul Cairns | |||
| Part of the challenge of designing systems to support knowledge work is to
do so in a way which is sympathetic to users' uncertainty. NewsHarvester is a
test-bed system designed to support news research and writing in a way that
accommodates uncertainty in relation to information gathering. It does this
using 'drag-and-link'; a simple feature by which text extracts copied from
source locations are appended with hyperlinks to force the re-display of the
source. We describe the rationale for using drag-and-link within NewHarvester
based on a previous ethnographic study of journalists, describe its
implementation within NewsHarvester, and report a user-evaluation which
compared drag-and-link with printing and standard drag-and-drop as information
gathering mechanisms. We found that users wanted to relocate information they
had not previously identified as useful in order to include it in their report,
to better understand the context of information already extracted, and as part
of a more serendipitous search for information to add to a near-complete
report. Users also considered drag-and-link an easier method for gathering
information than printing, and considered that drag-and-link made it easier to
relocate information. They also considered that drag-and-link promoted more
flexible and dynamic working and increased user enjoyment. An assessment of the
quality of their work showed a trend that favoured drag-and-link over the other
two methods, although this was not statistically significant. We conclude that
drag-and-link improves user-experience during research and writing tasks in the
face of information gathering uncertainty. Keywords: Information behaviour / Writing / PIM / Journalism / System evaluation | |||
| Age- and experience-related user behavior differences in the use of complicated electronic devices | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 425-437 | |
| Neung Eun Kang; Wan Chul Yoon | |||
| In this study, we observed the behavior of younger adults (20-29 years old)
and middle-aged adults (46-59 years old) interacting with complicated
electronic devices. Two recently released multi-functional multimedia devices,
namely PMPs (portable multimedia players) and MP3 players were used in the
observations. We examined various aspects of interaction behaviors in terms of
performance, strategies, error consequences, physical operation methods, and
workload. Our analysis of age-related differences included differences in
background knowledge as an important independent factor. The results revealed
that differences in age meaningfully affected the observed error frequency, the
number of interaction steps, the rigidity of exploration, the success of
physical operation methods, and subjective perception of temporal demand and
performance. In contrast, trial-and-error behavior and frustration levels were
influenced by background knowledge rather than age. These novel findings
provide important new insights into user interaction characteristics between
different age groups and may facilitate the design of age group-appropriate
interfaces for complicated electronic devices. Keywords: Middle-aged adults / Age-related differences / Background knowledge /
Complicated electronic devices | |||
| Usability of optically simulated haptic feedback | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 438-451 | |
| Koert van Mensvoort; Dik J. Hermes; Maurice van Montfort | |||
| In this contribution a method will be described to optically simulate haptic
feedback without resorting to mechanical force feedback devices. This method
exploits the domination of the visual over the haptic modality. The perception
of haptic feedback, usually generated by force feedback devices, was simulated
by tiny displacements on the cursor position relative to the intended force.
The usability of optically simulated haptic feedback (OSHF) was tested
experimentally by measuring effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of its
users in a Fitts' type target-acquisition task and comparing the results with
the usability of mechanically simulated force feedback and normal feedback.
Results show that OSHF outperforms mechanically simulated haptic feedback and
normal feedback, especially in the case of small targets. Keywords: Optically simulated haptic feedback / User interfaces / GUI / Haptics /
Simulation / Interactive animation / Target acquisition / Multisensory
perception / Interaction styles | |||
| Office window of the future? -- Field-based analyses of a new use of a large display | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 452-465 | |
| Batya Friedman; Nathan G. Freier; Peter H., Jr. Kahn; Peyina Lin; Robin Sodeman | |||
| We installed large plasma displays on the walls of seven inside offices of
faculty and staff at a university, and displayed, as the default image,
real-time HDTV views of the immediate outside scene. Then, utilizing a
field-study methodology, data were collected over a 16-week period to explore
the user experience with these large display windows. Through the triangulation
of data -- 652 pages of interview transcripts, journal entries, and responses
to email inquiries -- results showed that users deeply appreciated many aspects
of their experience. Benefits included a reported increase in users' connection
to the wider social community, connection to the natural world, psychological
wellbeing, and cognitive functioning. Users also integrated the large display
window into their workplace practice. However, users expressed concerns
particularly about the impacts on the privacy of people whose images were
captured in the public place by the HDTV camera. Discussion focuses on design
challenges for future investigations into related uses of large displays. Keywords: Community / Field-based analyses / Large display / Office environment /
Organizational practice / Privacy / Privacy in public / Social issues / User
experience / Value sensitive design / Workplace | |||
| In praise of forgiveness: Ways for repairing trust breakdowns in one-off online interactions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 466-480 | |
| Asimina Vasalou; Astrid Hopfensitz; Jeremy V. Pitt | |||
| Online offences are generally considered as frequent and intentional acts
performed by a member with the aim to deceive others. However, an offence may
also be unintentional or exceptional, performed by a benevolent member of the
community. This article examines whether a victim's decrease in trust towards
an unintentional or occasional offender can be repaired in an online setting,
by designing and evaluating systems to support forgiveness. We study which of
three systems enable the victim of a trust breakdown to fairly assess this kind
of offender. The three systems are: (1) a reputation system, (2) a reputation
system with a built-in apology forum that may display the offender's apology to
the victim and (3) a reputation system with a built-in apology forum that also
includes a "forgiveness" component. The "forgiveness" component presents the
victim with information that demonstrates the offender's trustworthiness as
judged by the system. We experimentally observe that systems (2) and (3),
endorsing apology and supporting forgiveness, allow victims to recover their
trust after online offences. An apology from the offender restores the victim's
trust only if the offender cooperates in a future interaction; it does not
alleviate the trust breakdown immediately after it occurs. By contrast, the
"forgiveness" component restores the victim's trust directly after the offence
and in a subsequent interaction. The applicability of these findings for
extending reputation systems is discussed. Keywords: Trust / Social dilemmas / Forgiveness / Reputation / Apology / One-off
interactions | |||
| Collaborative and social aspects of software development | | BIB | Full-Text | Full-Text | 481-483 | |
| Judith Good; Pablo Romero | |||
| An institutional analysis of software teams | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 484-494 | |
| Josh Tenenberg | |||
| Modern software is constructed by teams of software developers. The central
question that this paper addresses is what policies should be enacted for
structuring software teams to enhance cooperative as opposed to self-serving
behavior? The contribution of this paper is in viewing software teams as being
subject to a set of well-understood collective action problems: there are
individual incentives to receive the joint rewards for a team-developed
software project without contributing a fair share to its development. In this
paper, an institutional analysis perspective is used in presenting a set of
theoretical principles and an analytical framework recently developed in game
theory, political economy, experimental economics, and natural resource
governance for the understanding and resolution of these collective action
problems. The principles and analysis framework are applied to an empirical
case study of software teamwork within an academic setting. This case study
shows, first, how to apply the analytic framework on an actual collective
action situation. Second, it demonstrates how the theoretical understandings
can be used as a basis to account for outcomes within this setting. And third,
it provides an example of a particular institutional arrangement that elicits
high levels of cooperation and low levels of free riding within a real-world
setting. Understanding the importance of institutions for shaping individual
and social behavior within software development teams makes these institutions
more amenable to intentional human design. Keywords: Free riding / Cooperation / Software management / Teamwork / Social dilemma
/ Collective action problem | |||
| The social side of software engineering -- A real ad hoc collaboration network | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 495-505 | |
| Sébastien Cherry; Pierre N. Robillard | |||
| Recognised first and foremost as a technical task, the construction of
software is, for the most part, a human experience. Software development is an
intensive cognitive task, which also constitutes an exercise in complex
interrelationships. This paper presents a case study conducted to analyse ad
hoc collaborative activities taking place between team-mates during an
industrial software development cycle. Observations based on audio-video
recording are analysed with a methodology from social sciences research. The
paper describes the observational approaches, the various methods used to
validate data and how quantitative data are extracted from the qualitative
observations of team-mates. Patterns of ad hoc collaboration emerging from this
study are revealed, which lead us to believe that both the implicit and
explicit roles of partners have a definitive impact on their ad hoc interaction
profiles. As a result, this study helps to provide an understanding of some of
the pivotal aspects of software engineering, such as collaboration,
coordination and, more generally, work team dynamics. Further details relating
to our initial motivations are included, followed by a comprehensive
description of the methodological approach designed specifically for this
research. Finally, some results are presented, which shed light on a real ad
hoc collaboration network and support the importance of the human and social
aspects of software engineering in a more substantial way. Keywords: Ad hoc collaboration / Face-to-face exchange / Exchanges patterns / Software
development / Cognitive activities / Case study / Sharing of knowledge | |||
| Collaboration and co-ordination in mature eXtreme programming teams | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 506-518 | |
| Helen Sharp; Hugh Robinson | |||
| Mature eXtreme programming (XP) teams are highly collaborative and
self-organising. In previous studies, we have observed that these teams rely on
two apparently simple mechanisms of co-ordination and collaboration: story
cards and the Wall. Story cards capture and embody the user stories which form
the basis of implementation, while the Wall is a physical space used to
organise and display the cards being implemented during the current development
cycle (called an iteration). In this paper, we analyse the structure and use of
story cards and the Wall in three mature XP teams, using a distributed
cognition approach. The teams work in different commercial organisations
developing different systems, yet we find significant similarities between
their use of these two artefacts. Although simple, teams use the cards and the
Wall in sophisticated ways to represent and communicate information that is
vital to support their activities. We discuss the significance of the physical
medium for the story cards and the Wall in an XP team and discuss the
considerations that need to be taken into account for the design of technology
to support the teams. Keywords: Distributed cognition / Story card / Information radiator / Agile
development | |||
| Pair programming and the mysterious role of the navigator | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 519-529 | |
| Sallyann Bryant; Pablo Romero; Benedict du Boulay | |||
| Computer programming is generally understood to be highly challenging and
since its inception a wide range of approaches, tools and methodologies have
been developed to assist in managing its complexity. Relatively recently the
potential benefits of collaborative software development have been formalised
in the practice of pair programming. Here we attempt to 'unpick' the pair
programming process through the analysis of verbalisations from a number of
commercial studies. We focus particularly on the roles of the two programmers
and what their key characteristics and behaviours might be. In particular, we
dispute two existing claims: (i) that the programmer who is not currently
typing in code ("the navigator") is constantly reviewing what is typed and
highlighting any errors (i.e. acting as a reviewer) and (ii) that the navigator
focuses on a different level of abstraction as a way of ensuring coverage at
all necessary levels (i.e. acting as a foreman). We provide an alternative
model for these roles ("the tag team") in which the driver and navigator play
much more equal roles. We also suggest that a key factor in the success of pair
programming may be the associated increase in talk at an intermediate level of
abstraction. Keywords: Pair programming / Verbal protocol analysis / Extreme programming | |||
| Empirical evaluation of distributed pair programming | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 530-544 | |
| Brian Hanks | |||
| Pair programming, in which two individuals share a single computer to
collaboratively develop software, has been shown to have many benefits in
industry and in education. One drawback of pair programming is its collocation
requirement, which limits its use to situations where the partners can
physically meet. A tool that supported distributed pair programming, in which
the partners could pair from separate locations, would remove this impediment.
This paper discusses the development and empirical evaluation of such a tool. A
significant feature of this tool is the presence of a second cursor that
supports gesturing. Students who used the tool in their introductory
programming course performed as well as collocated students on their
programming assignments and final exam. These students also spent less time
working by themselves. They also felt that the gesturing feature was useful and
used it regularly. Keywords: Distributed pair programming / Gesturing / Introductory programming /
Empirical software engineering / Computer-supported cooperative work | |||
| Public participation in proprietary software development through user roles and discourse | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 545-557 | |
| David G. Hendry | |||
| The opportunity for users to participate in design and development processes
has expanded in recent years through such communication and information
technologies as mailing lists, bug trackers, usage monitoring, rich
interactions between users and service-center staff, remote usability testing,
and so on. A key question, therefore, is deciding how to engage users in design
and development through such technologies. This paper addresses this question
by reviewing literature on end-user programming and open source development to
develop a framework concerning user roles and discourse. The framework makes
two claims: (1) user roles and a social structure emerge after the introduction
of a software application (role differentiation); and (2) different roles
demand different kinds of discourse for deciding what to do and for reflecting
upon intended and unintended consequences (role discourse demands). To show its
application, the framework is used to analyze the development of del.icio.us, a
breakthrough application for social bookmarking. This development process is
notable because it is a characteristic of open source software development in
some respects, but the code is not made available publicly. This hybridization
appears to be widely applicable and suggests how design and development
processes can be structured as a service where the design and development of
the system proceeds simultaneously with the formation and nurturing of a
community of users. Keywords: Design informatics / Information management / Design knowledge management /
Design information systems / Social creativity / Reflective practice /
Free/open source software / Socio-technical analysis / Innovation / Social
bookmarking / del.icio.us | |||
| User and developer mediation in an Open Source Software community: Boundary spanning through cross participation in online discussions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 558-570 | |
| Flore Barcellini; Françoise Détienne; Jean-Marie Burkhardt | |||
| The aim of this research is to analyse how design and use are mediated in
Open Source Software (OSS) design. Focusing on the Python community, our study
examines a "pushed-by-users" design proposal through the discussions occurring
in two mailing-lists: one, user-oriented and the other, developer-oriented. To
characterize the links between users and developers, we investigate the
activities and references (knowledge sharing) performed by the contributors to
these two mailing-lists. We found that the participation of users remains local
to their community. However, several key participants act as boundary spanners
between the user and the developer communities. This emerging role is
characterized by cross-participation in parallel same-topic discussions in both
mailing-lists, cohesion between cross-participants, the occupation of a central
position in the social network linking users and developers, as well as active,
distinctive and adapted contributions. The user championing the proposal acts
as a key boundary spanner coordinating the process and using explicit linking
strategies. We argue that OSS design may be considered as a form of "role
emerging design", i.e. design organized and pushed through emerging roles and
through a balance between these roles. The OSS communities seem to provide a
suitable socio-technical environment to enable such role emergence. Keywords: Open Source Software Community / Cross-participants / Boundary spanners /
Distributed design / Role emerging design | |||
| Technological opportunities for supporting people with dementia who are living at home | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 571-586 | |
| Joseph P. Wherton; Andrew F. Monk | |||
| Recent advances in pervasive computing raise new possibilities for
supporting people with dementia who wish to live in their own homes. Interviews
were conducted in order to identify the daily activities of people living at
home that might most usefully be supported. In Study 1, nine interviews and one
focus group were conducted with occupational therapists and other professional
caregivers. In Study 2, interviews were conducted with eight people with mild
to moderate dementia in their own homes and 10 informal caregivers. A grounded
theory analysis of the transcripts revealed specific areas where support was
needed and suggestions concerning the kinds of prompting and sensing required
to support: dressing, taking medication, personal hygiene, preparing food, and
socialising. The findings demonstrate the value of consulting directly with
people with dementia and their caregivers. The design challenge is to provide
flexible prompting systems that are sensitive to the intentions, capabilities,
and values of their users. Keywords: Dementia / Assistive technology / Prompting | |||
| Social enjoyment with electronic photograph displays: Awareness and control | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 587-604 | |
| Siân E. Lindley; Andrew F. Monk | |||
| Two experiments are reported in which groups of three friends socialised
around their own photographs. The photographs were of two types, depicting
events where all three had been present, permitting reminiscing, and events
where only the photographer had been present, permitting storytelling. In
Experiment 1 the seating arrangement was manipulated so that the two audience
members sat either behind or around the photographer. It was hypothesised that
the former would lower levels of peripheral awareness within the groups,
resulting in a more formal conversation and a poorer recreational experience.
In Experiment 2, control over the photographs was manipulated so that either
all three group members had access to a remote control (distributed control),
or only the photographer did (single control). It was hypothesised that
distributed control would result in less formal conversations and a better
recreational experience. In both experiments, the hypotheses were supported:
patterns of social interaction were significantly affected by the manipulation
of awareness during storytelling, and by the manipulation of control during
reminiscing. Additionally, the two manipulations were found to affect ratings
of enjoyment and fun, respectively. The results are interpreted in terms of a
causative model of unfolding and recounted experience. Keywords: Affordance / Photo talk / Experiment | |||
| Zoom interaction design for pen-operated portable devices | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 605-627 | |
| Thorsten Büring; Jens Gerken; Harald Reiterer | |||
| Maps are currently the most common application domain for zoomable user
interfaces (ZUIs). Standard techniques for controlling such interfaces on
pen-operated devices usually rely on sequential interaction, i.e. the users can
either zoom or pan. A more advanced technique is speed-dependent automatic
zooming (SDAZ), which combines rate-based panning and zooming into a single
operation and thus enables concurrent interaction. Yet another navigation
strategy is to allow for concurrent, but separate, zooming and panning.
However, due to the limitations of stylus input, this feature requires the
pen-operated device to be enhanced with additional input dimensions. We propose
one unimanual approach based on pen pressure, and one bimanual approach in
which users pan the view with the pen while manipulating the scale by tilting
the device. In total, we developed four interfaces (standard, SDAZ, pressure,
and tilting) and compared them in a usability study with 32 participants. The
results show that SDAZ performed well for both simple speed tasks and more
complex navigation scenarios, but that the coupled interaction led to much user
frustration. In a preference vote, the participants strongly rejected the
interface and stated that they found it difficult and irksome to control. This
result enhances previous research, which in most cases found a high user
preference for SDAZ, but focused solely on simple speed tasks. In contrast, the
pressure and tilt interfaces were much appreciated, which, considering the
novelty of these approaches, is highly encouraging. However, in solving the
test tasks the participants took hardly any advantage of parallel interaction.
For a map view of 600×600 pixels, this resulted in task-completion times
comparable to those for the standard interface. For a smaller 300×300
pixels view, the standard interface was actually significantly faster than the
two novel techniques. This ratio is also reflected in the preference votes.
While for the larger 600×600 pixels view the tilt interface was the most
popular, the standard interface was rated highest for the 300×300 pixels
view. Hence, on a smaller display, precise interaction may have an increased
impact on the interface usability. Overall, we believe that the alternative
interaction techniques show great potential for further development. In
particular, a redesign should encourage parallel interaction more strongly and
also provide improved support for precise navigation. Keywords: Zoom / SDAZ / Tilt / Pressure / Map navigation / Semantic zoom / Automatic
zoom / Small-screen devices / PDA | |||
| Multimedia interfaces for users with high functioning autism: An empirical investigation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 628-639 | |
| Ouriel Grynszpan; Jean-Claude Martin; Jacqueline Nadel | |||
| This article focuses on issues relevant to human-computer interaction in the
case of autism. We designed training software that target specific
communicative disorders attributed to autism and defined an empirical protocol
to test this software. The experimental software platform that we developed
manages each game's interface modalities and logs users' actions, for the
purpose of exploring the impact of various human-computer interfaces, which
involve text, speech and images. Ten adolescents diagnosed with autism used
this software during 13 sessions, at the rate of one session per week. The
first and last sessions were dedicated for evaluating participants' skills. The
experiment was also performed by a group of 10 typically developing children
matched on developmental age and academic level. Results show that participants
with autism had poorer performances on the richer multimedia interfaces. They
seemed to lack the initiative of organizing the available multimodal sources of
information. In this article, we specifically discuss the impact of executive
disorders on the use of multimodal interfaces with an emphasis on Animated
Conversational Agents. Keywords: Multimodality / Autism / Design / Animated conversational agent / Facial
expression / Training | |||
| Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 641-661 | |
| Charlene Jennett; Anna L. Cox; Paul Cairns; Samira Dhoparee; Andrew Epps; Tim Tijs; Alison Walton | |||
| Despite the word's common usage by gamers and reviewers alike, it is still
not clear what immersion means. This paper explores immersion further by
investigating whether immersion can be defined quantitatively, describing three
experiments in total. The first experiment investigated participants' abilities
to switch from an immersive to a non-immersive task. The second experiment
investigated whether there were changes in participants' eye movements during
an immersive task. The third experiment investigated the effect of an
externally imposed pace of interaction on immersion and affective measures
(state anxiety, positive affect, negative affect). Overall the findings suggest
that immersion can be measured subjectively (through questionnaires) as well as
objectively (task completion time, eye movements). Furthermore, immersion is
not only viewed as a positive experience: negative emotions and uneasiness
(i.e. anxiety) also run high. Keywords: Immersion / Games / Eye tracking / Pace / Affect | |||
| Physiology-based affect recognition for computer-assisted intervention of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 662-677 | |
| Changchun Liu; Karla Conn; Nilanjan Sarkar; Wendy Stone | |||
| Generally, an experienced therapist continuously monitors the affective cues
of the children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and adjusts the course of
the intervention accordingly. In this work, we address the problem of how to
make the computer-based ASD intervention tools affect-sensitive by designing
therapist-like affective models of the children with ASD based on their
physiological responses. Two computer-based cognitive tasks are designed to
elicit the affective states of liking, anxiety, and engagement that are
considered important in autism intervention. A large set of physiological
indices are investigated that may correlate with the above affective states of
children with ASD. In order to have reliable reference points to link the
physiological data to the affective states, the subjective reports of the
affective states from a therapist, a parent, and the child himself/herself were
collected and analyzed. A support vector machines (SVM)-based affective model
yields reliable prediction with approximately 82.9% success when using the
therapist's reports. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that the
affective states of children with ASD have been experimentally detected via
physiology-based affect recognition technique. Keywords: Human-computer Interaction / Autism intervention / Physiological sensing /
Support vector machines / Affect recognition | |||
| Prior language experience and language anxiety as predictors for non-native language commercial website use intention | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 678-687 | |
| Hui-Jen Yang; Wen-Yu Tsao; Yun-Long Lay; Minder Chen; YiChing Liou | |||
| Based on the research model, language anxiety, prior non-native language
experience, Internet self-efficacy and language self-efficacy are analyzed for
the intention to use non-native language commercial web sites, respectively.
Prior non-native language experience has affected language anxiety, language
self-efficacy and intention to use non-native language commercial web sites,
respectively. By the same token, whether or not Internet self-efficacy and
language self-efficacy affected by language anxiety is also examined. A valid
sample of 418 undergraduates was tested in this study. Regression analysis
results fully supported the model tested. These results suggest that language
anxiety, prior non-native language experience, language self-efficacy and
Internet self-efficacy have an effect on the intention to use non-native
language commercial web sites. Prior non-native language experience has
significantly affected language anxiety, language self-efficacy and the
intention to use the non-native language commercial web sites, respectively.
Furthermore, language anxiety has significantly affected language self-efficacy
and Internet self-efficacy, respectively. Educational research and practitioner
implications are provided at the end of the paper. Keywords: Non-native-language commercial web site / Prior non-native language
experience / Language anxiety / Language self-efficacy / Internet self-efficacy | |||
| Misuse of automated decision aids: Complacency, automation bias and the impact of training experience | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 688-699 | |
| J. Elin Bahner; Anke-Dorothea Hüper; Dietrich Manzey | |||
| The present study investigates automation misuse based on complacency and
automation bias in interacting with a decision aid in a process control system.
The effect of a preventive training intervention which includes exposing
participants to rare automation failures is examined. Complacency is reflected
in an inappropriate checking and monitoring of automated functions. In
interaction with automated decision aids complacency might result in commission
errors, i.e., following automatically generated recommendations even though
they are false. Yet, empirical evidence proving this kind of relationship is
still lacking. A laboratory experiment (N=24) was conducted using a process
control simulation. An automated decision aid provided advice for fault
diagnosis and management. Complacency was directly measured by the
participants' information sampling behavior, i.e., the amount of information
sampled in order to verify the automated recommendations. Possible commission
errors were assessed when the aid provided false recommendations. The results
provide clear evidence for complacency, reflected in an insufficient
verification of the automation, while commission errors were associated with
high levels of complacency. Hence, commission errors seem to be a possible,
albeit not an inevitable consequence of complacency. Furthermore, exposing
operators to automation failures during training significantly decreased
complacency and thus represents a suitable means to reduce this risk, even
though it might not avoid it completely. Potential applications of this
research include the design of training protocols in order to prevent
automation misuse in interaction with automated decision aids. Keywords: Decision support system / Automation bias / Complacency / Commission error /
Automation misuse / Human-automation interaction / Trust | |||
| Effects of haptic feedback, stereoscopy, and image resolution on performance and presence in remote navigation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 701-717 | |
| Sangyoon Lee; Gerard Jounghyun Kim | |||
| Traditionally, the main goal of teleoperation has been to successfully
achieve a given task as if performing the task in local space. An emerging and
related requirement is to also match the subjective sensation or the user
experience of the remote environment, while maintaining reasonable task
performance. This concept is often called "presence" or "(experiential)
telepresence," which is informally defined as "the sense of being in a mediated
environment." In this paper, haptic feedback is considered as an important
element for providing improved presence and reasonable task performance in
remote navigation. An approach for using haptic information to "experientially"
teleoperate a mobile robot is described. Haptic feedback is computed from the
range information obtained by a sonar array attached to the robot, and
delivered to a user's hand via a haptic probe. This haptic feedback is provided
to the user, in addition to stereoscopic images from a forward-facing stereo
camera mounted on the mobile robot. The experiment with a user population in a
real-world environment showed that haptic feedback significantly improved both
task performance and user-felt presence. When considering user-felt presence,
no interaction among haptic feedback, image resolution, and stereoscopy was
observed, that is, haptic feedback was effective, regardless of the fidelity of
visual elements. Stereoscopic images also significantly improved both task
performance and user-felt presence, but high-resolution images only
significantly improved user-felt presence. When considering task performance,
however, it was found that there was an interaction between haptic feedback and
stereoscopy, that is, stereoscopic images were only effective when no force
feedback was applied. According to the multiple regression analysis, haptic
feedback was a higher contributing factor to the improvement in performance and
presence than image resolution and stereoscopy. Keywords: Haptic feedback / Teleoperation / Remote navigation / Mobile robot /
Presence / Telepresence / User study | |||
| Evaluating usability of a commercial electronic health record: A case study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 718-728 | |
| Paula J. Edwards; Kevin P. Moloney; Julie A. Jacko; François Sainfort | |||
| Electronic health records (EHR) are increasingly being implemented by care
providers in order to streamline processes and improve quality of care. Due to
EHRs' complexity, the usability of these systems is crucial to ensure safety
and to enable clinicians (users) to focus on their patients rather than the
technology. This case study presents experiences from the implementation of a
commercial EHR in a large pediatric hospital system. This case discusses how a
predictive evaluation method, Heuristic Walkthrough, was used to evaluate and
improve the usability of the EHR system. Outcomes from the evaluation resulted
in immediate changes in the system configuration and training materials, which
helped to avoid usability problems at rollout, as well as change requests to
the vendor to improve overall system usability in the long term. Design
trade-offs and lessons learned for future EHR implementations and other
healthcare applications are discussed. Keywords: Predictive usability evaluation / Electronic health record / Healthcare /
Heuristic Walkthrough | |||
| Relative role of merging and two-handed operation on command selection speed | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 729-740 | |
| Nicholas Y. Chen; François Guimbretière; Corinna E. Löckenhoff | |||
| This paper examines the influence of two interface characteristics on
command selection speed: the integration of command selection with direct
manipulation (merging), and two-handed operation. We compared four interaction
techniques representing combinations of these characteristics (Marking Menu,
Two-handed Tool Palette, Toolglass, and Control Menu). Results suggest that the
one-handed techniques selected for the present study produced a speed advantage
over two-handed techniques, whereas the influence of merging was task
dependent. A follow-up study examining Bimanual Marking Menu suggests that the
performance of two-handed techniques may be reduced due to a split in visual
attention required for certain techniques. Taken together, these findings have
important implications for the design of command selection mechanisms for
pen-based interfaces. Keywords: Two-handed input / GUIs / Toolglass / Palette / Marking Menu / Control Menu
/ Merging / Human factors / Experimentation | |||
| Entertainment modeling through physiology in physical play | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 741-755 | |
| Georgios N. Yannakakis; John Hallam | |||
| This paper is an extension of previous work on capturing and modeling the
affective state of entertainment ("fun") grounded on children's physiological
state during physical game play. The goal is to construct, using representative
statistics computed from children's physiological signals, an estimator of the
degree to which games provided by the playground engage the players. Previous
studies have identified the difficulties of isolating elements of physical
activity attributed to reported entertainment derived (solely) from heart rate
(HR) recordings. In the present article, a survey experiment on a larger scale
and a physical activity control experiment for surmounting those difficulties
are devised. In these experiments, children's HR, blood volume pulse (BVP) and
skin conductance (SC) signals, as well as their expressed preferences of how
much "fun" particular game variants are, are obtained using games implemented
on the Playware physical interactive playground. Given effective data
collection, a set of numerical features is computed from these measurements of
the child's physiological state. A comprehensive statistical analysis shows
that children's reported entertainment preferences correlate well with specific
features of the recorded signals. Preference learning techniques combined with
feature set selection methods permit the construction of user models that
predict reported entertainment preferences given suitable signal features. The
most accurate models are obtained through evolving artificial neural networks
and are demonstrated and evaluated on a Playware game and a control task
requiring physical activity. The best network is able to correctly match
expressed preferences in 69.64% of cases on previously unseen data
(p-value=0.0022) and indicates two dissimilar classes of children: those that
prefer constantly energetic play of low mental/emotional load; and those that
report as fun a dynamic play that involves high mental/emotional load
independently of physical effort. The generality of the methodology, its
limitations, its usability as a real-time feedback mechanism for entertainment
augmentation and as a validation tool are discussed. Keywords: Affective computing / Fun / Entertainment modeling / Physical games /
Preference learning / Physiology / Heart rate / Blood volume pulse / Skin
conductance | |||
| Ontology-based information extraction and integration from heterogeneous data sources | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 759-788 | |
| Paul Buitelaar; Philipp Cimiano; Anette Frank; Matthias Hartung; Stefania Racioppa | |||
| In this paper we present the design, implementation and evaluation of SOBA,
a system for ontology-based information extraction from heterogeneous data
resources, including plain text, tables and image captions. SOBA is capable of
processing structured information, text and image captions to extract
information and integrate it into a coherent knowledge base. To establish
coherence, SOBA interlinks the information extracted from different sources and
detects duplicate information. The knowledge base produced by SOBA can then be
used to query for information contained in the different sources in an
integrated and seamless manner. Overall, this allows for advanced retrieval
functionality by which questions can be answered precisely. A further
distinguishing feature of the SOBA system is that it straightforwardly
integrates deep and shallow natural language processing to increase robustness
and accuracy. We discuss the implementation and application of the SOBA system
within the SmartWeb multimodal dialog system. In addition, we present a
thorough evaluation of the different components of the system. However, an
end-to-end evaluation of the whole SmartWeb system is out of the scope of this
paper and has been presented elsewhere by the SmartWeb consortium. Keywords: Ontology-based natural language processing / Information extraction /
Knowledge integration / Question answering | |||
| Flattery may get computers somewhere, sometimes: The moderating role of output modality, computer gender, and user gender | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 789-800 | |
| Eun-Ju Lee | |||
| This experiment extended the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm by
examining how output modality (text plus cartoon character vs. synthetic
speech), computer gender (male vs. female), and user gender (male vs. female)
moderate the ways in which people respond to computers that flatter.
Specifically, participants played a trivia game with a computer, which they
knew might provide incorrect answers. Participants in the generic-comment
condition received strictly factual feedback, whereas those in the flattery
condition were given additional remarks praising their performance. Consistent
with Fogg and Nass [1997. Silicon sycophants: the effects of computers that
flatter. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 46, 551-561] study,
flattery led to more positive overall impressions and performance evaluations
of the computer, but such effects were found only in the text plus character
condition and among women. In addition, flattery increased participants'
suspicion about the validity of the computer's feedback and lowered conformity
to the computer's suggestions. Participants conformed more to the male than
female computers when computer gender was manifested in gendered cartoon
characters in the text condition, with no corresponding effects in the speech
condition. Results suggest that synthetic speech output might suppress social
responses to computers, such as flattery effects and gender stereotyping. Keywords: Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) / Flattery / Output modality | |||
| Avatars in social media: Balancing accuracy, playfulness and embodied messages | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 801-811 | |
| Asimina Vasalou; Adam Joinson; Tanja Bänziger; Peter Goldie; Jeremy Pitt | |||
| This paper examines how users negotiate their self-presentation via an
avatar used in social media. Twenty participants customised an avatar while
thinking aloud. An analysis of this verbal data revealed three motivating
factors that drive self-presentation: (1) avatars were used to accurately
reflect their owners' offline self; participants chose to display stable
self-attributes or idealised their avatar by concealing or emphasising
attributes aligned to imagined social roles, (2) the diversity of customisation
options was exploited by some participants who broke free from the social rules
governing self-presentation offline; others used the avatar's appearance to
emotionally provoke and engage the avatar viewer and finally, (3) avatars were
used as proxies; participants designed their online self in order to convey a
message to a significant other. Keywords: Avatars / Social media / Self-presentation / Identity | |||
| A framework for process-solution analysis in collaborative learning environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 812-832 | |
| Crescencio Bravo; Miguel A. Redondo; M. Felisa Verdejo; Manuel Ortega | |||
| One of the most challenging aspects of computer-supported collaborative
learning (CSCL) research is automation of collaboration and interaction
analysis in order to understand and improve the learning processes. It is
particularly necessary to look in more depth at the joint analysis of the
collaborative process and its resulting product. In this article, we present a
framework for comprehensive analysis in CSCL synchronous environments
supporting a problem-solving approach to learning. This framework is based on
an observation-abstraction-intervention analysis life-cycle and consists of a
suite of analysis indicators, procedures for calculating indicators and a model
of intervention based on indicators. Analysis indicators are used to represent
the collaboration and knowledge building process at different levels of
abstraction, and to characterize the solution built using models of the
application domain, the problems to solve and their solutions. The analysis
procedures combine analysis of actions and dialogue with analysis of the
solution. In this way, the process and the solution are studied independently
as well as together, enabling the detection of correlations between them. In
order to exemplify and test the framework, the methodological process
underlying the framework was followed to guide the implementation of the
analysis subsystems of two existing CSCL environments. In addition, a number of
studies have been conducted to evaluate the framework's approach, demonstrating
that certain modes of collaborating and working imply particular types of
solutions and vice versa. Keywords: CSCL / Collaboration and interaction analysis / Solution analysis / User and
group modelling | |||
| Mobile human-computer interaction | | BIB | Full-Text | Full-Text | 833-837 | |
| Antti Oulasvirta; Stephen Brewster | |||
| Control centric approach in designing scrolling and zooming user interfaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 838-856 | |
| Parisa Eslambolchilar; Roderick Murray-Smith | |||
| The dynamic systems approach to the design of continuous interaction
interfaces allows the designer to use simulations, and analytical tools to
analyse the behaviour and stability of the controlled system alone and when it
is coupled with a manual control model of user behaviour. This approach also
helps designers to calibrate and tune the parameters of the system before the
actual implementation, and in response to user feedback. In this work we
provide a dynamic systems interpretation of the coupling of internal states
involved in speed-dependent automatic zooming, and test our implementation on a
text browser on a Pocket PC instrumented with a tilt sensor. We illustrate
simulated and experimental results of the use of the proposed coupled
navigation and zooming interface using tilt and touch screen input. Keywords: Human-computer interaction / Dynamics / Continuous interaction / Tilt input
/ Mobile devices / Zooming/scrolling user interfaces | |||
| The performance of hand postures in front- and back-of-device interaction for mobile computing | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 857-875 | |
| Jacob O. Wobbrock; Brad A. Myers; Htet Htet Aung | |||
| Three studies of different mobile-device hand postures are presented. The
first study measures the performance of postures in Fitts' law tasks using one
and two hands, thumbs and index fingers, horizontal and vertical movements, and
front- and back-of-device interaction. Results indicate that the index finger
performs well on both the front and the back of the device, and that thumb
performance on the front of the device is generally worse. Fitts' law models
are created and serve as a basis for comparisons. The second study examines the
orientation of shapes on the front and back of a mobile device. It shows that
participants' expectations of visual feedback for finger movements on the back
of a device reverse the direction of their finger movements to favor a
"transparent device" orientation. The third study examines letter-like gestures
made on the front and back of a device. It confirms the performance of the
index finger on the front of the device, while showing limitations in the
ability for the index finger on the back to perform complex gestures. Taken
together, these results provide an empirical foundation upon which new mobile
interaction designs can be based. A set of design implications and
recommendations are given based directly on the findings presented. Keywords: Mobile device / Handheld device / PDA / Pocket PC / Mobile phone / Finger
input / Thumb input / Front-of-device / Back-of-device / Touchpad / Touch
screen / Fitts' law / Throughput / Shape orientation / Letter orientation /
Text entry / Text input / EdgeWrite | |||
| Route-following assistance for travelers with cognitive impairments: A comparison of four prompt modes | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 876-888 | |
| Stephen Fickas; McKay Sohlberg; Pei-Fang Hung | |||
| Navigational skills, which are fundamental to community travel and hence,
personal independence, are often disrupted in people with cognitive
impairments. Assistive technology, in the form of navigation devices, are being
developed that can support community navigation by delivering directional
information. Selecting an effective mode to provide route-prompts is a critical
design issue. This study evaluated the differential effects on pedestrian route
following using different modes of prompting delivered via an electronic device
for travelers with severe cognitive impairments. The research design used was a
within subject comparison to evaluate potential differences in route-following
performance when travelers received directions using four different prompt
modes: (1) aerial map image, (2) point of view map image, (3) audio
direction/no image and (4) text-based instructions/no image. Twenty travelers
with severe cognitive impairments due to acquired brain injury walked four
equivalent routes using four different prompting modes delivered via a
wrist-worn navigation device. Navigation scores were computed that captured
accuracy and confidence during navigation. Results of the repeated measures
analysis of variance suggested that participants performed best when given
prompts via speech-based audio directions. The majority of the participants
also preferred this prompting mode. Findings are interpreted in the context of
cognitive resource allocation theory. Keywords: Navigation prompting / Cognitive impairments | |||
| Older people and mobile phones: A multi-method investigation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 889-901 | |
| Sri Kurniawan | |||
| This paper investigates issues related to the use of mobile phones by people
aged 60 years and over and characteristics of an ageing-friendly mobile phone.
This study combines qualitative and quantitative analysis methods of Delphi
interviews, focus group discussions, and online survey. The expert interviews
and the focus group discussions covered usage patterns, problems, benefits, and
desired and unwanted features. The issues raised in the discussions were
translated into an online survey of 100 people. This study revealed that older
people are passive users of mobile phones, that they experience fear of
consequences of using unfamiliar technology, and that most preferred design
features are aids for declining functional abilities. Gender differences in
preferred design features were observed, with women focusing on haptic aids and
men on perceptual aids. Keywords: Mobile phone / Qualitative / Quantitative / Focus group / Interview / Survey
/ Factor analysis | |||
| Mobile technologies in mobile spaces: Findings from the context of train travel | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 902-915 | |
| Carolyn Axtell; Donald Hislop; Steve Whittaker | |||
| Whilst mobile work is increasingly prevalent, there is little detailed study
of this phenomenon in the specific context of a train. Thus, the current study
focuses on how mobile work is conducted onboard trains, as a way of exploring
general issues relating to mobility. Through survey and interview data, several
constraints to mobile work on the train were revealed. These include the lack
of reliable communications network, access to co-workers and lack of privacy
which together restrict the types of communicative tasks people carry out. We
found that the majority of tasks conducted were socially independent in nature
(without the need for communication with others). However, people made some
technological task and contextual adaptations which allowed them to work around
these limitations to conduct some socially interdependent work (with the need
for communication with others). We explain why and how specific
technologies/media are used (and adapted) in this setting and explore the
implications this has for technology design and our thinking about mobile work. Keywords: Mobile work / Mobile technologies / Adaptation / Train travel | |||
| Organisational usability of mobile computing -- Volatility and control in mobile foreign exchange trading | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 916-929 | |
| Carsten Sørensen; Adel Al-Taitoon | |||
| The past two decades have presented significant technological developments
of mobile information and communication technology (ICT) such as portable
technologies (e.g. mobile phones, notebook computers, personal digital
assistants), and associated wireless infrastructures (e.g. wireless local area
networks, mobile telecommunications infrastructures, bluetooth personal area
networks). Mobile ICT offers a range of technical opportunities for
organisations and their members to implement enterprise mobility. However, the
challenges of unlocking the opportunities of enterprise mobility are not well
understood. One of the key issues is to establish systems and associated
working practices that are deemed usable by both individuals and the
organisation. The aim of this paper is to show that the concept of
organisational usability can enrich the understanding of mobile ICT in
organisations. As an addition to the traditional understanding of individual
usability, organisational usability emphasises the role of mobile ICT beyond
individual support. A large-scale study of four different ways of organising
foreign exchange trading in a Middle Eastern bank serves as the concrete
foundation for the discussion. The empirical study showed how the final of the
four attempts at establishing 24-h trading deployed mobile ICT to enable mobile
trading and by providing a solution, which was deemed usable for both the
organisation and the traders. The paper contributes to the understanding of how
usability of mobile ICT critically depends on carefully balancing individual
and organisational requirements. It also demonstrates the need for research in
enterprise mobility to embrace both individual and organisational concerns in
order to grasp the complexity of the phenomena. Keywords: Enterprise mobility / Organisational usability / Mobile ICT / Foreign
exchange trading / Middle East | |||
| Kei-Tying teens: Using mobile phone e-mail to bond, bridge, and break with social ties -- a study of Japanese adolescents | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 930-943 | |
| Jeffrey Boase; Tetsuro Kobayashi | |||
| This paper examines the extent to which Japanese adolescents use mobile
phone e-mail to bond, bridge, and break with their social ties. Although
existing literature shows that adolescents use mobile phone e-mail to bond with
intimate strong ties, the fluid nature of social networks during adolescence
suggests that mobile phone e-mail may also be used to bridge to new ties and to
break with old ties. Drawing on a stratified random sample survey of 501 high
school students living in Tokyo, we find that mobile phone e-mail is used both
to bond and bridge, but not to break with ties. We also find that the intensity
with which Japanese adolescents use mobile phone e-mail is more fundamentally a
result of bridging than bonding. These findings apply both to typical users and
heavy users. Keywords: Mobile phone / E-mail / SMS / Adolescence / Japan / Social ties / Social
network / Bonding / Bridging | |||
| Theorizing mobility in community networks | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 944-962 | |
| John M. Carroll; Mary Beth Rosson | |||
| Community networks emerged in North America during the late 1970s and early
1980s. During the past three decades, paradigms for networked information,
services, and collaboration as resources for community development have evolved
in many respects. In this paper we revisit a theoretical analysis of broadband
Internet community networks [Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B., 2003a. A trajectory
for community networks. The Information Society 19(5), 381-393], and extend
that analysis to mobile/wireless community networks. This analysis is part of
the planning for a specific municipal wireless project in the town of State
College, Pennsylvania. But more broadly, it is intended to engage and to help
focus human-computer interaction (HCI) design perspectives in the development
of wireless community networks throughout North America and elsewhere. Keywords: Community networks / Community informatics / Municipal wireless | |||
| Storied spaces: Cultural accounts of mobility, technology, and environmental knowing | | BIBAK | Full-Text | Full-Text | 963-976 | |
| Johanna Brewer; Paul Dourish | |||
| When we think of mobility in technical terms, we think of topics such as
bandwidth, resource management, location, and wireless networks. When we think
of mobility in social or cultural terms, a different set of topics come into
view: pilgrimage and religious practice, globalization and economic
disparities, migration and cultural identity, daily commutes and the
suburbanization of cities. In this paper, we examine the links between these
two aspects of mobility. Drawing on non-technological examples of cultural
encounters with space, we argue that mobile information technologies do not
just operate in space, but they are tools that serve to structure the spaces
through which they move. We use recent projects to illustrate how three
concerns with mobility and space -- legibility, literacy, and legitimacy --
open up new avenues for design exploration and analysis. Keywords: Mobility / Space / Place / Social / Cultural | |||