| Colour appeal in website design within and across cultures: A multi-method evaluation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-21 | |
| Dianne Cyr; Milena Head; Hector Larios | |||
| Colour has the potential to elicit emotions or behaviors, yet there is
little research in which colour treatments in website design are systematically
tested. Little is known about how colour affects trust or satisfaction on the
part of the viewer. Although the Internet is increasingly global, few
systematic studies have been undertaken in which the impact of colour on
culturally diverse viewers is investigated in website design. In this research
three website colour treatments are tested across three culturally distinct
viewer groups for their impact on user trust, satisfaction, and e-loyalty. To
gather data, a rich multi-method approach is used including eye-tracking, a
survey, and interviews. Results reveal that website colour appeal is a
significant determinant for website trust and satisfaction with differences
noted across cultures. The findings have practical value for web marketers and
interface designers concerning effective colour use in website development. Keywords: Colour appeal / Culture / Website design / Multi-methodology / Eye-tracking | |||
| Can inspection methods generate valid new knowledge in HCI? The case of semiotic inspection | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 22-40 | |
| Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza; Carla Faria Leitão; Raquel Oliveira Prates; Sílvia Amélia Bim; Elton José da Silva | |||
| HCI evaluation methods tend to be proposed and used to verify the
interactive qualities of specific systems and design strategies. A discussion
about the scientific merits of such methods to advance knowledge in HCI as a
field is very rare, although much needed. This paper shows that, under certain
conditions, inspection methods can be safely used in scientific research in HCI
and extend their advantages beyond the territory of professional practice.
Taking the Semiotic Inspection Method (SIM) as an example, we argue that its
interpretive results are objective, can be validated, and produce scientific
knowledge comparable to that generated by more widely accepted methods. Keywords: Semiotic engineering / Evaluation method / Semiotic Inspection Method /
Scientific application / Technical application / Communicability | |||
| Computational models and experimental investigations of effects of balance and symmetry on the aesthetics of text-overlaid images | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 41-56 | |
| Chien-Yin Lai; Pai-Hsun Chen; Sheng-Wen Shih; Yili Liu; Jen-Shin Hong | |||
| This article describes computational models based on principles of visual
weights to compute the symmetry and balance of text-overlaid images. Two
experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of symmetry and balance
on the aesthetic appeal of text-overlaid images. In the first experiment, five
color photos were used to compose a set of test images overlaid with a
paragraph of Chinese texts as the stimuli. Contrastly, the second experiment
applied monochrome photos to compute the stimuli. The positions of the text
overlay were determined by varying the balance and symmetry in order to
validate computational aesthetic quantification algorithms with subjective
ratings. The stimuli were rated by 20 subjects in each experiment using the
ratio-scale magnitude estimation method against a benchmark image for each
photo. Results from both experiments show that subjects are adept at judging
symmetry and balance in both the horizontal and vertical directions. Subjects
are also adept at judging radial symmetry about the center point of an image.
The experiments also established a relationship between a higher averaged
visual balance and the aesthetic appeal of text-overlaid images. Symmetry in
either direction, however, did not result in any proportional relations to the
aesthetic appeal. Keywords: Computational aesthetics / Interface design / Compositional attributes | |||
| Computer agents versus avatars: Responses to interactive game characters controlled by a computer or other player | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 57-68 | |
| Sohye Lim; Byron Reeves | |||
| Computer and videogames often require that users interact with other
characters on the screen that represent other real people or characters that
are controlled by computer code running within the game. The difference between
game play with other avatars (player-controlled characters) or agents
(characters controlled by the computer) may influence the engagement a game
player experiences. This study investigated the effects of agency (avatar
versus agent) and the type of gaming activity (competition versus cooperation)
on physiological arousal and subjective evaluation of play. A 2 (avatar,
agent)×2 (competition, cooperation) within-subject experiment was
conducted (N=32). Players exhibited greater physiological arousal to otherwise
identical interactions when other characters were introduced as an avatar
rather than an agent. Furthermore, the co-player's source of agency interacted
with the type of gaming activity. The results have implications for
understanding how different forms of representation in virtual worlds and games
will affect psychological responses in the contexts of entertainment, learning
and the conduct of serious work. Keywords: Avatar / Agent / Competitive and cooperative game play | |||
| Task-technology fit and user acceptance of online auction | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 69-89 | |
| Hsin Hsin Chang | |||
| Word Wide Web intelligent agent technology has provided researchers and
practitioners, such as those involved in information technology, innovation,
knowledge management, and technical collaboration with the ability to examine
the design principles and performance characteristics of the various approaches
to intelligent agent technology, and to increase the cross fertilization of
ideas on the development of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems among
different domains. This study investigates the employment of intelligent agents
in a web-based auction process, with particular reference to the
appropriateness of the agent software for the online auction task, consumers'
value perception of the agent, the effect of this consumer perception on their
intention to use the tool, and a measure of consumer acceptance. In the initial
case study, both consumers and web operators thought the use of software agents
enhanced online auction efficiency and timeliness. The second phase of the
investigation established that consumer familiarity with the agent
functionality was positively associated with seven dimensions: online auction
site's task, agent's technology, task-technology fit, perceived ease of use,
perceived usefulness, perceived playfulness, intention to use tool, and
negatively associated with perceived risk. Intelligent agents have the
potential to release skilled operator time for the use of value-adding tasks in
the planning and expansion of online auctions. Keywords: Online auction task / Agent technology / Task-technology fit / User
acceptance of technology | |||
| Usability principles and best practices for the user interface design of complex 3D architectural design and engineering tools | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 90-104 | |
| Ghang Lee; Charles M. Eastman; Tarang Taunk; Chun-Heng Ho | |||
| This study proposes usability principles for the user interfaces (UI) design
of complex 3D parametric architectural design and engineering tools. Numerous
usability principles have been developed for generic desktop or web
applications. The authors tried to apply existing usability principles as
guidelines for evaluating complex 3D design and engineering applications.
However, the principles were too generic and high-level to be useful as design
or evaluation guidelines. The authors, all with more than 10 or 30 years of
experience with various CAD systems, selected and reviewed 10 state-of-the-art
3D parametric design and engineering applications and captured what they
thought were best practices, as screenshots and videos. The collected best
practices were reviewed through a series of discussion sessions. During the
discussion sessions, UI design principles underlying the collected best
practices were characterized in the line of existing UI principles. Based on
the best practices and the derived common UI principles, a new set of refined
and detailed UI principles were proposed for improving and evaluating 3D
parametric engineering design tools in the future. Keywords: User interface (UI) / Computer-aided design (CAD) / 3D engineering design /
Best practices / Usability principles | |||
| Telling the story of older people e-mailing: An ethnographical study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 105-120 | |
| Sergio Sayago; Josep Blat | |||
| While e-mail is the Internet application most used by older people, very
little is known about how they interact with e-mail systems and use them in
their daily lives. We undertook a 3-year ethnographical study aimed at
revealing and explaining real life e-mailing. We describe and discuss the
nature of e-mail use in terms of social circles; frequency, type of content and
patterns of communication; relationship with other technologies and activities;
motivation and interactive experiences. Within this context of everyday use, we
uncover and explain the (relative) importance of several interaction barriers,
such as cognitive load, difficulties using input devices and perception of
visual information. We claim that cognitive difficulties are much more relevant
than difficulties in reading from the screen, for instance, so challenging
results of current HCI research with older people. We show and discuss some
implications for designing better e-mail systems (and interactive technologies)
for older people. Keywords: Older people / Ethnography / E-mail / Real life use / Accessibility barriers
/ Interactive experiences | |||
| Beyond performance: Feature awareness in personalized interfaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 121-137 | |
| Leah Findlater; Joanna McGrenere | |||
| Personalized graphical user interfaces have the potential to reduce visual
complexity and improve interaction efficiency by tailoring elements such as
menus and toolbars to better suit an individual user's needs. When an interface
is personalized to make useful features more accessible for a user's current
task, however, there may be a negative impact on the user's awareness of the
full set of available features, making future tasks more difficult. To assess
this tradeoff we introduce awareness as an evaluation metric to be used in
conjunction with performance. We then discuss three studies we have conducted,
which show that personalized interfaces tradeoff awareness of unused features
for performance gains on core tasks. The first two studies, previously
published and presented only in summary, demonstrate this tradeoff by measuring
awareness using a recognition test of unused features in the interface. The
studies also evaluated two different types of personalized interfaces: a
layered interfaces approach and an adaptive split menu approach. The third
study, presented in full, focuses on adaptive split menus and extends results
from the first two studies to show that different levels of awareness also
correspond to an impact on performance when users are asked to complete new
tasks. Based on all three studies and a survey of related work, we outline a
design space of personalized interfaces and present several factors that could
affect the tradeoff between core task performance and awareness. Finally, we
provide a set of design implications that should be considered for personalized
interfaces. Keywords: Personalization / Adaptive user interfaces / User studies | |||
| What input errors do you experience? Typing and pointing errors of mobile Web users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 138-157 | |
| Tianyi Chen; Yeliz Yesilada; Simon Harper | |||
| Small devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) are widely used to
access the World Wide Web (Web). However, accessing the Web from small devices
is affected by poor interface bandwidth, such as small keyboards and limited
pointing devices. There is little empirical work investigating the input
difficulties caused by such insufficient facilities, however, anecdotal
evidence suggests that there is a link between able-bodied users of the mobile
Web and motor impaired users of the Web on desktop computers. This being the
case we could transfer the solutions which already exists for motor impaired
users into the mobile Web and vice versa. This paper presents a user study that
investigates the input errors of mobile Web users in both typing and pointing.
The study identifies six types of typing errors and three types of pointing
errors shared between our two user domains. We find that mobile Web users often
confuse the different characters located on the same key, press keys that are
adjacent to the target key, and miss certain key presses. When using a stylus,
they also click in the wrong places, slide the stylus during multiple clicks,
and make errors when dragging. Our results confirm that despite using different
input devices, mobile Web users share common problems with motor impaired
desktop users; and we therefore surmise that it will be beneficial to transfer
available solutions between these user domains in order to address their common
problems. Keywords: Mobile Web / Disabled users / Input | |||
| Feasibility study of tactile-based authentication | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 158-181 | |
| Ravi Kuber; Wai Yu | |||
| Research suggests that human limitations are rarely considered in the design
of knowledge-based authentication systems. In an attempt to foster entry to a
system, individuals tend to choose passwords which are easy to recall. However,
inappropriate selection can compromise data security. A novel approach has been
developed to restore the balance between security and memorability through the
use of the haptic channel. This paper introduces the Tactile Authentication
System (TAS), which enables the user to authenticate entry through the ability
to remember a sequence of pre-selected tactile sensations. The design process
undertaken to develop distinguishable tactile stimuli for use within TAS is
described, and details of the recognition-based tactile authentication
mechanism are also presented. Findings from an empirical study reported in this
paper, have revealed that 16 participants were able to authenticate access to
TAS over the course of a one-month period, with low levels of error. The
approach was found to offer benefits over conventional visual-based
authentication methods. Tactile stimuli are presented underneath the
fingertips, and are therefore occluded from others. As the sense of touch is
personal to each user, tactile stimuli are difficult to describe in concrete
terms, and cannot easily be written down or disclosed, thereby reducing the
chance of unauthorized third party access. Keywords: Haptics / Tactile / Human factors / Authentication | |||
| A methodology for eliciting, modelling, and evaluating expert knowledge for an adaptive work-integrated learning system | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 185-208 | |
| Tobias Ley; Barbara Kump; Dietrich Albert | |||
| We present a methodology for constructing and evaluating models for adaptive
informal technology-enhanced workplace learning. It is designed for
knowledge-intensive work domains which are not pre structured according to a
fixed curriculum. We extend research on Competence-based Knowledge Space Theory
which has been mainly applied in educational settings. Our approach employs
systematic knowledge elicitation and practically feasible evaluation techniques
performed as part of the modelling process for iterative refinement of the
models. A case study was performed in the Requirements Engineering domain to
apply and test the developed methodology. We discuss lessons learned and
several implications for knowledge engineering for adaptive workplace learning. Keywords: Competence-based knowledge space theory / Work-integrated learning / Domain
modelling / Knowledge elicitation / Model evaluation | |||
| Building respectful interface agents | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 209-222 | |
| Silvia Schiaffino; Marcelo Armentano; Analia Amandi | |||
| To provide personalized assistance to users, interface agents have to learn
not only a user's preferences and interests with respect to a software
application, but also when and how the user prefers to be assisted. Interface
agents have to detect the user's intention to determine when to assist the
user, and the user's interaction and interruption preferences to provide the
right type of assistance without hindering the user's work. In this work we
describe a user profiling approach that considers these issues within a user
profile and a decision making approach that enables the agent to choose the
best type of assistance for a given user in a given situation. We also describe
the results obtained when evaluating our proposal in the tourism domain, and we
compare these results with some previous ones in the calendar management
domain. Keywords: User-agent interaction / User profiling / Interface agents / Plan
recognition | |||
| Better to be frustrated than bored: The incidence, persistence, and impact of learners' cognitive-affective states during interactions with three different computer-based learning environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 223-241 | |
| Ryan S. J. D. Baker; Sidney K. D'Mello; Ma. Mercedes T. Rodrigo; Arthur C. Graesser | |||
| We study the incidence (rate of occurrence), persistence (rate of
reoccurrence immediately after occurrence), and impact (effect on behavior) of
students' cognitive-affective states during their use of three different
computer-based learning environments. Students' cognitive-affective states are
studied using different populations (Philippines, USA), different methods
(quantitative field observation, self-report), and different types of learning
environments (dialogue tutor, problem-solving game, and problem-solving-based
Intelligent Tutoring System). By varying the studies along these multiple
factors, we can have greater confidence that findings which generalize across
studies are robust. The incidence, persistence, and impact of boredom,
frustration, confusion, engaged concentration, delight, and surprise were
compared. We found that boredom was very persistent across learning
environments and was associated with poorer learning and problem behaviors,
such as gaming the system. Despite prior hypothesis to the contrary,
frustration was less persistent, less associated with poorer learning, and did
not appear to be an antecedent to gaming the system. Confusion and engaged
concentration were the most common states within all three learning
environments. Experiences of delight and surprise were rare. These findings
suggest that significant effort should be put into detecting and responding to
boredom and confusion, with a particular emphasis on developing pedagogical
interventions to disrupt the "vicious cycles" which occur when a student
becomes bored and remains bored for long periods of time. Keywords: Affect / Cognitive-affective states / Affective computing / Affective
persistence / Intelligent tutoring systems / Educational games | |||
| Exploring the relationship between presence and enjoyment in a virtual museum | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 243-253 | |
| Stella Sylaiou; Katerina Mania; Athanasis Karoulis; Martin White | |||
| The Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO) system, developed as
a part of an EU ICT project, provides museum curators with software and
interface tools to develop web-based virtual museum exhibitions by integrating
augmented reality (AR) and 3D computer graphics. ARCO technologies could also
be deployed in order to implement educational kiosks placed in real-world
museums. The main purpose of the system is to offer an entertaining,
informative and enjoyable experience to virtual museum visitors. This paper
presents a formal usability study that has been undertaken in order to explore
participants' perceived 'sense of being there' and enjoyment while exposed to a
virtual museum exhibition in relation to real-world visits. The virtual museum
implemented was based on an existing gallery in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, UK. It is of interest to determine whether a high level of presence
results in enhanced enjoyment. After exposure to the system, participants
completed standardized presence questionnaires related to the perceived realism
of cultural artifacts referred to as AR objects' presence, as well as to
participants' generic perceived presence in the virtual museum referred to as
VR presence. The studies conducted indicate that previous experience with ICTs
(Information and Communication Technologies) did not correlate with perceived
AR objects' presence or VR presence while exposed to a virtual heritage
environment. Enjoyment and both AR objects' presence and VR presence were found
to be positively correlated. Therefore, a high level of perceived presence
could be closely associated with satisfaction and gratification which
contribute towards an appealing experience while interacting with a museum
simulation system. Keywords: Presence / Virtual museum / User study / Usability | |||
| Product interface design: A participatory approach based on virtual reality | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 254-269 | |
| Fabio Bruno; Maurizio Muzzupappa | |||
| The usability of the user interface is a key aspect for the success of
several industrial products. This assumption has led to the introduction of
numerous design methodologies addressed to evaluate the user-friendliness of
industrial products. Most of these methodologies follow the participatory
design approach to involve the user in the design process. Virtual Reality is a
valid tool to support Participatory Design, because it facilitates the
collaboration among designers and users. The present study aims to evaluate the
feasibility and the efficacy of an innovative Participatory Design approach
where Virtual Reality plays a 'double role': a tool to evaluate the usability
of the virtual product interface, and a communication channel that allows users
to be directly involved in the design process as co-designers. In order to
achieve these goals, we conducted three experiments: the purpose of the first
experiment is to determine the influence of the virtual interface on the
usability evaluation by comparing "user-real product" interaction and
"user-virtual product" interaction. Subsequently, we tested the effectiveness
of our approach with two experiments involving users (directly or through their
participation in a focus group) in the redesign of a product user interface.
The experiments were conducted with two typologies of consumer appliances: a
microwave oven and a washing machine. Keywords: Participatory design / Virtual reality / Usability / Product interface
design | |||
| A user study to investigate semantically relevant contextual information of WWW images | | BIBA | Full-Text | 270-287 | |
| Fariza Fauzi; Mohammed Belkhatir | |||
| The contextual information of Web images is investigated to address the issue of enriching their index characterizations with semantic descriptors and therefore bridge the semantic gap (i.e. the gap between the low-level content-based description of images and their semantic interpretation). Although we are highly motivated by the availability of rich knowledge on the Web and the relative success achieved by commercial search engines in indexing images using surrounding text-based information in webpages, we are aware that the unpredictable quality of the surrounding text is a major limiting factor. In order to improve its quality, we highlight contextual information which is relevant for the semantic characterization of Web images and study its statistical properties in terms of its location and nature considering a classification into five semantic concept classes: signal, object, scene, abstract and relational. A user study is conducted to validate the results. The results suggest that there are several locations that consistently contain relevant textual information with respect to the image. The importance of each location is influenced by the type of webpage as the results show the different distribution of relevant contextual information across the locations for different webpage types. The frequently found semantic concept classes are object and abstract. Another important outcome of the user study shows that a webpage is not an atomic unit and can be further partitioned into smaller segments. Segments containing images are of interest and termed as image segments. We observe that users typically single out textual information which they consider relevant to the image from the textual information bounded within the image segment. Hence, our second contribution is a DOM Tree-based webpage segmentation algorithm to automatically partition webpages into image segments. We use the resultant human-labeled dataset to validate the effectiveness of our segmentation method and experiments demonstrate that our method achieves better results compared to an existing segmentation algorithm. | |||
| Technology-mediated interruption management | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 288-306 | |
| Sukeshini Grandhi; Quentin Jones | |||
| Previous research into providing interpersonal technology-mediated
interruption management support has predominantly been conducted from a
paradigmatic standpoint that focused on modeling the context of the person
being interrupted (interruptee) such as his/her mental workload, activity and
location as a means to identify opportune/inopportune moments for
communication. However, the utility of this approach and the associated design
implications are questioned by the interruption value evaluation paradigm,
which holds that interpersonal interruption management decisions are often made
by people assessing factors such as who the interruption is from and what it is
about (the relational context). To assess the validity of the competing
assumptions underlining these paradigms about everyday interpersonal
interruption management, a field study of interruption management practices in
everyday cell phone use was conducted. Analysis of 1201 incoming calls from our
experience sampling method study of cell phone use shows that "who" is calling
is used most of the time (87.4%) by individuals to make deliberate call
handling decisions (N=834), in contrast to the interruptee's current local
social (34.9%) or cognitive (43%) contexts. Building on these findings, we
present a theoretical framework that aids in understanding the design space of
interruption management tools that focus on reducing uncertainty of the
interruption context to improve interruption management decisions. Keywords: Interruption / Interruptibility / Availability / Management / Communication
/ Design / Mobile / Phones | |||
| Generation Y, web design, and eye tracking | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 307-323 | |
| Soussan Djamasbi; Marisa Siegel; Tom Tullis | |||
| Generation Y (age 18-31) is a very large and economically powerful
generation, containing eighty-two million people and spending $200 billion
annually. It is not surprising that companies are interested in gaining the
patronage of this group, particularly via the web. Surprisingly, very little
research into making web pages appealing to this important demographic has been
done. This paper addresses this need through two separate studies. The first,
an online survey, provides evidence that our proposed score for predicting the
visual appeal of web pages reflects the self report measure of what pages
Generation Y likes. To refine these findings, an eye tracking study is
conducted using the pages that were most and least liked in Study I.
Participants' eye movement is tracked while browsing these pages, providing
evidence of what attracts their attention. The results of these two studies
suggest that Generation Y may prefer pages that include a main large image,
images of celebrities, little text, and a search feature. This research has
important implications. Keywords: Generation Y / Millenials / HCI / Human computer interaction / Eye tracker /
Fixation / Gaze / Usability / Web design | |||
| Human-Computer Interaction for Medicine and Health Care (HCI4MED): Towards making Information usable | | BIB | Full-Text | 325-327 | |
| Andreas Holzinger; Harold Thimbleby; Russel Beale | |||
| From expert-driven to user-oriented communication of infection control guidelines | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 328-343 | |
| Fenne Verhoeven; Michaël F. Steehouder; Ron M. G. Hendrix; Julia E. W. C. Van Gemert-Pijnen | |||
| Currently, infection control guidelines in hospitals and other health care
institutions are more expert-driven than user-oriented. In order to enhance the
usability of the expert-driven guideline format, we developed a website for the
communication of existing guidelines that better fit the practical information
needs of health care workers (HCWs). We employed a user-centered design process
that involved two studies. In the initial study, 28 HCWs were asked to solve
tasks using existing, paper-based infection control guidelines. In order to
detect their strategies and problems, the participants were asked to think
aloud. Usability problems occurred due to poorly structured information,
insufficient quality of information, and a mismatch between experts' and HCWs'
vocabulary. To overcome these shortcomings, three design principles were
applied for communicating infection control guidelines: better navigation (the
guidelines should be searchable in several ways); multimodality (the guidelines
should not be presented as text only), and action-orientation (the guidelines
should be presented as HCWs' behaviors). A website was developed to meet these
principles. In the second study, the same 28 HCWs completed tasks identical to
those of the first study while thinking aloud, but this time using the website.
The percentage of correctly completed tasks increased and the mean time for
task completion decreased significantly. Also, respondents were more satisfied
with the website than the paper-based guidelines. The number of problems due to
poor information quality and a mismatch in vocabulary declined, although the
number of structural problems increased. This can probably be explained by the
fact that the navigation structure was user-generated (using Card Sort), in
contrast to a standardized answer format based on common usability principles.
Overall, we found that involving HCWs in the development process is important
to create a sense of ownership and to foster the implementation of the
guidelines, which might eventually result in compliance and reduce health
care-associated infections. This paper outlines concrete steps for how to
involve HCWs in the design process. Keywords: User-centered design / Usability / Infectious diseases | |||
| Knowledge elicitation for validation of a neonatal ventilation expert system utilising modified Delphi and focus group techniques | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 344-354 | |
| Kenneth Tan; Gordon Baxter; Simon Newell; Steve Smye; Peter Dear; Keith Brownlee; Jonathan Darling | |||
| Objective, methods & materials, results It is well known that
ventilation strategies for newborn infants may vary significantly between
individual doctors. The aim of this study was to elicit knowledge of
ventilation management to provide a baseline for evaluating the performance of
an expert system for neonatal ventilation (FLORENCE). The modified Delphi
method and focus group techniques were used to arrive at consensus management
strategies on 40 hypothetical ventilation scenarios. The underlying cognitive
processes of the experts were also explored further to assist in the
development of the expert system. The strategies arrived at were used to
provide a performance level which FLORENCE was tested against. The solutions
were judged to be equivalent between FLORENCE and neonatologists in 29 of the
40 cases. In the remaining 11 scenarios; FLORENCE also provided adequate
solutions.
Conclusions: The focus group technique was more effective than modified Delphi method in achieving consensus on ventilation management. This consensus on ventilation was used as the baseline to evaluate the performance of an expert system. Keywords: Knowledge elicitation / Validation / Expert system / Modified Delphi / Focus
group | |||
| Evaluation of 2D and 3D glove input applied to medical image analysis | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 355-369 | |
| E. V. Zudilova-Seinstra; P. J. H. de Koning; A. Suinesiaputra; B. W. van Schooten; R. J. van der Geest; J. H. C. Reiber; P. M. A. Sloot | |||
| We describe a series of experiments that compared 2D/3D input methods for
selection and positioning tasks related to medical image analysis. For our
study, we chose a switchable P5 Glove Controller, which can be used to provide
both 2DOF and 6DOF input control. Our results suggest that for both tasks the
overall performance and accuracy can be improved when the input device with
more degrees of freedom (DOF) is used for manipulation of the visualized
medical data. 3D input turned out to be more beneficial for the positioning
task than for the selection task. In order to determine a potential source of
the difference in the task completion time between 2D and 3D input, we also
investigated whether there was a significant difference between 2DOF and 6DOF
input methods with regard to the time spent on task-specific basic
manipulations. Keywords: 2D/3D input devices / Medical segmentation / Interactive steering tasks /
User study | |||
| Easing semantically enriched information retrieval -- An interactive semi-automatic annotation system for medical documents | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 370-385 | |
| Theresia Gschwandtner; Katharina Kaiser; Patrick Martini; Silvia Miksch | |||
| Mapping medical concepts from a terminology system to the concepts in the
narrative text of a medical document is necessary to provide semantically
accurate information for further processing steps. The MetaMap Transfer (MMTx)
program is a semantic annotation system that generates a rough mapping of
concepts from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus to free
medical text, but this mapping still contains erroneous and ambiguous bits of
information. Since manually correcting the mapping is an extremely cumbersome
and time-consuming task, we have developed the MapFace editor. The editor
provides a convenient way of navigating the annotated information gained from
the MMTx output, and enables users to correct this information on both a
conceptual and a syntactical level, and thus it greatly facilitates the
handling of the MMTx program. Additionally, the editor provides enhanced
visualization features to support the correct interpretation of medical
concepts within the text. We paid special attention to ensure that the MapFace
editor is an intuitive and convenient tool to work with. Therefore, we recently
conducted a usability study in order to create a well founded background
serving as a starting point for further improvement of the editor's usability. Keywords: Semantic annotation / Graphical editor / UMLS | |||
| Persuasive robotic assistant for health self-management of older adults: Design and evaluation of social behaviors | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 386-397 | |
| Rosemarijn Looije; Mark A. Neerincx; Fokie Cnossen | |||
| Daily health self-management, such as the harmonization of food, exercise
and medication, is a major problem for a large group of older adults with
obesity or diabetics. Computer-based personal assistance can help to behave
healthy by persuading and guiding older adults. For effective persuasion, the
assistant should express social behaviors (e.g., turn taking, emotional
expressions) to be trustworthy and show empathy. From the motivational
interviewing method and synthetic assistants' literature, we derived a set of
social behaviors, and implemented a subset in a physical character, a virtual
character and a text interface. The first behavior type concerns conversing
with high-level dialogue (semantics, intentions), which could be implemented in
all 3 assistants. The other behavior types could only be implemented in the
characters: showing natural cues (e.g., gaze, posture), expressing emotions
(e.g., compassionate face), and accommodating social conversations (e.g., turn
taking). In an experiment, 24 older adults (45-65) interacted with the text
interface and one of the characters, conform a "one-week diabetics scenario".
They experienced the virtual and physical character as more empathic and
trustworthy than the text-based assistant, and expressed more conversational
behavior with the characters. However, it seems that the preference of
interacting with the character or the text interface was influenced by the
conscientiousness of the participant; more conscientious people liked the text
interface better. Older adults responded more negative to the characters that
lacked the social behaviors than to the text interface. Some differences
between the virtual and physical character probably occurred due to the
specific constraints of the physical character. Keywords: Persuasive computing / Human-robot interaction / Health-care | |||
| Pauses in doctor-patient conversation during computer use: The design significance of their durations and accompanying topic changes | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 398-409 | |
| William Newman; Graham Button; Paul Cairns | |||
| Talk is often suspended during medical consultations while the clinician
interacts with the patient's records and other information. This study of four
general practitioners (GPs) focused on these suspensions and the adjacent
conversational turns. Conversation analysis revealed how GPs took action to
close conversations down prior to attending to the records, resulting in a
'free turn' that could be taken up by either GP or patient. The durations of
the intervening pauses were also analysed, exposing a hitherto unobserved
10-second timeframe within which both GP and patient showed a preference for
the conversation to be resumed. Resumption was more likely to be achieved
within 10 s when the GP's records were paper-based rather than computer-based.
Subsequent analysis of topic changes on resumption of talk has revealed a
5-second timeframe, also undocumented; when pauses exceed this timeframe, it is
rare for the previous topic to be resumed without a restatement. Data recorded
in the home suggest that these timeframes are also present in family
conversations. We argue for considering the two timeframes when designing
systems for use in medical consultations and other conversational settings, and
discuss possible outcomes. Keywords: Medical interaction / Conversational pauses / User interface design | |||
| Who will watch (over) me? Humane monitoring in dementia care | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 410-422 | |
| Yvonne Schikhof; Ingrid Mulder; Sunil Choenni | |||
| The ageing population as well as the tight labor market put pressure on
future health care. In this article, we explore the role of monitoring systems
in small-scale housing for older people with dementia. By incorporating
principles of value-sensitive design in a human centered design process we
developed a system for remote monitoring at night in dementia care. The
performance of the working system was evaluated in the real-life context of a
nursing home and is currently being implemented in small-scale housing. Next to
reporting the iterative design and evaluation of the monitoring system, we
reflect upon the approach taken. Keywords: Value sensitive design / Human centered design / Assistive technology | |||
| Designing product listing pages -- Effects on sales and users' cognitive workload | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 423-431 | |
| P. Schmutz; S. P. Roth; M. Seckler; K. Opwis | |||
| Product listing pages, where information on multiple products are displayed,
represent a vital point of an E-commerce website on which consumer decisions
are made. Prior research has shown that the design of product listing pages has
an impact on users' performance and their recall of brand names. The aim of
this study was to examine effects of presentation on cognitive load and
consumer decisions. An online study was conducted comparing presentation type
(matrix versus list presentation). List presentation was associated with lower
cognitive load and more economic product selections. Eye-tracking data from an
additional laboratory experiment suggest that list presentation triggers
comparison processes which could account for the differences found. Keywords: E-commerce / Cognitive load / Product listing pages / Category pages /
Eye-tracking / Online shopping | |||
| User study on AffectIM, an avatar-based Instant Messaging system employing rule-based affect sensing from text | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 432-450 | |
| Alena Neviarouskaya; Helmut Prendinger; Mitsuru Ishizuka | |||
| Social interaction among people is an essential part of every society, and a
strong foundation for the development and self-actualization of a person. Even
in virtual environments we tend to interact in a social way. Our research
addresses the tasks of recognition, interpretation, and visualization of affect
communicated through text messaging. In order to facilitate sensitive and
expressive interaction in computer-mediated communication, we previously
introduced a novel syntactical rule-based approach to affect recognition from
text. The evaluation of the developed Affect Analysis Model showed promising
results regarding its capability to accurately recognize affective information
in text from an existing corpus of informal online conversations. To enrich the
user's experience in online communication, to make it enjoyable, exciting, and
fun, we implemented a web-based Instant Messaging (IM) application, AffectIM,
and endowed it with emotional intelligence by integrating the developed Affect
Analysis Model. This paper describes the findings of a twenty-person study
conducted with our AffectIM system. The results of the study indicate that our
IM system with automatic emotion recognition function can achieve a level of
affective intelligence (system is successful at conveying the user's feelings,
avatar expression is appropriate) that is comparable to "gold standard", where
users select the label of the conveyed emotion manually. Keywords: Affect sensing from text / Affective user interface / Avatar-based Instant
Messaging / User study | |||
| The effects of mutual location-awareness on group coordination | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 451-467 | |
| Nicolas Nova; Fabien Girardin; Pierre Dillenbourg | |||
| The importance of space and place in collaborative practices has been
strengthened with the ubiquitous computing paradigm, which aims at the
integration of computation in physical objects and places. New location-based
applications allow users to know where other individuals are in the physical
world. New collaborative applications engage users in geographically dispersed
and mobile activities. However, there is still a lack of information concerning
how mutual location-awareness (i.e. knowing partners' whereabouts) might
influence socio-cognitive processes involved in coordination. To address this
issue, we conducted field experiments with a mobile and collaborative game,
running on Tablet PCs, and compared two interfaces. On the first interface,
groups received automatic updates from teammates' whereabouts, while this
automatic MLA tool was not provided by the second interface. In addition, all
users could use their Tablet PCs to communicate by annotating the map. We found
no differences between the two conditions with regard to the task performance.
However, contrary to our expectations, players without automatic MLA had a
better representation of their partners' paths, wrote more messages and
provided more elaborate explanations of their strategies. Additionally,
automatic location-awareness undermined the coordination process, leading
participants to be less articulate about their strategy. The paper discusses
these results and the implications of such results. Keywords: Pervasive gaming / Collaborative game / Location-awareness / Location-based
services / Field experiment | |||
| Measuring the impact of personalization and recommendation on user behaviour | | BIB | Full-Text | 469-471 | |
| Markus Zanker; Francesco Ricci; Dietmar Jannach; Loren Terveen | |||
| Predictors of user perceptions of web recommender systems: How the basis for generating experience and search product recommendations affects user responses | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 472-482 | |
| Paloma Ochi; Shailendra Rao; Leila Takayama; Clifford Nass | |||
| One critical question suggested by Web 2.0 is as follows: When is it better
to leverage the knowledge of other users vs. rely on the product
characteristic-based metrics for online product recommenders? Three recent and
notable changes of recommender systems have been as follows: (1) a shift from
characteristic-based recommendation algorithms to social-based recommendation
algorithms; (2) an increase in the number of dimensions on which algorithms are
based; and (3) availability of products that cannot be examined for quality
before purchase. The combination of these elements is affecting users'
perceptions and attitudes regarding recommender systems and the products
recommended by them, but the psychological effects of these trends remain
unexplored. The current study empirically examines the effects of these
elements, using a 2 (recommendation approach: content-based vs.
collaborative-based, within)×2 (dimensions used to generate
recommendations: 6 vs. 30, between)×2 (product type: experience products
(fragrances) vs. search products (rugs), between) Web-based study (N=80).
Participants were told that they would use two recommender systems
distinguished by recommendation approach (in fact, the recommendations were
identical). There were no substantive main effects, but all three variables
exhibited two-way interactions, indicating that design strategies must be
grounded in a multi-dimensional understanding of these variables. The
implications of this research for the psychology and design of recommender
systems are presented. Keywords: Recommender systems / Content-based vs. collaborative-based recommendations
/ Number of dimensions for the basis of recommendation | |||
| User attitudes towards news content personalization | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 483-495 | |
| Talia Lavie; Michal Sela; Ilit Oppenheim; Ohad Inbar; Joachim Meyer | |||
| Personalizing news content requires to choose the appropriate depth of
personalization and to assess the extent to which readers' explicit expressions
of interest in general and specific news topics can be used as the basis for
personalization. A preliminary survey examined 117 respondents' attitudes
towards news content personalization and their interest in various news topics
and subtopics. The second survey examined 23 participants' declared and actual
interests. Participants preferred personalization based on general news topics.
Declared interest in general news topics adequately predicted the actual
interests in some topics, while in others users' interests differed between
general news topics and subtopics. The variance in interest in items also
differed among topics. Thus, different personalization methods should be used
for different topics. For some, such as 'Sports', users show either high
interest or no interest at all. In the latter case most articles related to the
topic should be removed, with the exception of items that refer to unique
events that may raise general interest according to the expressed interest. In
other topics, such as 'Science & Technology', most users are interested in
important articles, even if they are not interested in the general news topic.
Here, the filtering technique should identify the important articles and
present them to all readers. The results can be used to develop effective and
simple personalization mechanisms which can be applied to the personalization
of news, as well as to other domains. Keywords: News content personalization / Depth of personalization / Electronic news
topics | |||
| Personalized blog content recommender system for mobile phone users | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 496-507 | |
| Po-Huan Chiu; Gloria Yi-Ming Kao; Chi-Chun Lo | |||
| Compared to newspaper columnists and broadcast media commentators, bloggers
do not have organizations actively promoting their content to users; instead,
they rely on word-of-mouth or casual visits by web surfers. We believe the WAP
Push service feature of mobile phones can help bridge the gap between internet
and mobile services, and expand the number of potential blog readers. Since
mobile phone screen size is very limited, content providers must be familiar
with individual user preferences in order to recommend content that matches
narrowly defined personal interests. To help identify popular blog topics, we
have created (a) an information retrieval process that clusters blogs into
groups based on keyword analyses, and (b) a mobile content recommender system
(M-CRS) for calculating user preferences for new blog documents. Here we
describe results from a case study involving 20,000 mobile phone users in which
we examined the effects of personalized content recommendations. Browsing
habits and user histories were recorded and analyzed to determine individual
preferences for making content recommendations via the WAP Push feature. The
evaluation results of our recommender system indicate significant increases in
both blog-related push service click rates and user time spent reading
personalized web pages. The process used in this study supports accurate
recommendations of personalized mobile content according to user interests.
This approach can be applied to other embedded systems with device limitations,
since document subject lines are elaborated and more attractive to intended
users. Keywords: Recommender system / Mobile services / Blog / Content push / Recommendation | |||
| Benefits and costs of adaptive user interfaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 508-524 | |
| Talia Lavie; Joachim Meyer | |||
| The paper examines the positive and the possible adverse effects of adaptive
user interfaces (AUIs) in the context of an in-vehicle telematic system as a
function of four factors: (1) four different levels of adaptivity (ranging from
manual to fully adaptive with intermediate levels); (2) different tasks; (3)
routine (familiar) and non-routine (unfamiliar) situations; and (4) different
user age groups. Both experiments included three sessions during which
participants drove a simple driving simulator and performed tasks with the
telematic system at one of the adaptivity levels. We measured task performance
times and lane position variance. Adaptivity was not always equally beneficial,
and its benefits depended on a number of factors, including the frequency in
which the tasks were performed, the user's age, the difficulty of the task and
the user's involvement in the task. In familiar, routine situations, a fully
adaptive system was beneficial for all participants, particularly older ones.
In unfamiliar situations, to which the AUI was not adjusted, cognitive workload
increased substantially, adversely affecting performance. Intermediate levels
of adaptivity keep users involved in the task and help them become more
proficient when performing both routine and non-routine tasks. However,
intermediate levels of adaptivity should also be implemented with care, because
they may also have adverse effects when users encounter non-routine situations. Keywords: Adaptive user interface / Levels of adaptivity / Task frequency | |||
| In situ evaluation of recommender systems: Framework and instrumentation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 525-547 | |
| M. Funk; A. Rozinat; E. Karapanos; A. K. Alves de Medeiros; A. Koca | |||
| This paper deals with the evaluation of the recommendation functionality
inside a connected consumer electronics product in prototype stage. This
evaluation is supported by a framework to access and analyze data about product
usage and user experience. The strengths of this framework lie in the
collection of both objective data (i.e., "What is the user doing with the
product?") and subjective data (i.e., "How is the user experiencing the
product?"), which are linked together and analyzed in a combined way. The
analysis of objective data provides insights into how the system is actually
used in the field. Combined with the subjective data, personal opinions and
evaluative judgments on the product quality can be then related to actual user
behavior. In order to collect these data in a most natural context, remote data
collection allows for extensive user testing within habitual environments. We
have applied our framework to the case of an interactive TV recommender system
application to illustrate that the user experience of recommender systems can
be evaluated in real-life usage scenarios. Keywords: Use experience / Recommender systems / Experience sampling / Observation /
Process mining | |||
| Determining relevance of imprecise temporal intervals for cultural heritage information retrieval | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 549-560 | |
| Tomi Kauppinen; Glauco Mantegari; Panu Paakkarinen; Heini Kuittinen; Eero Hyvönen; Stefania Bandini | |||
| Time is an essential concept in cultural heritage applications. Instances of
temporal concepts such as time intervals are used for the annotation of
cultural objects and also for querying datasets containing information about
these objects. Hence it is important to match query and annotation intervals by
examining their similarity or closeness. One of the problems is that in many
cases time intervals are imprecise. For example, the boundaries of the
"Pre-Roman age" and the "Roman age" are inherently imprecise and it may be
difficult to distinguish them with clear-cut intervals. In this paper we apply
the fuzzy set theory to model imprecise time intervals in order to determine
relevance of the relationship between two time intervals. We present a method
for matching query and annotation intervals based on their weighted mutual
overlapping and closeness. We present (1) methods for calculating these weights
to produce a combined measure and (2) results of comparing the combined measure
with human evaluators as a case study. The case study takes into consideration
archaeological temporal information, which is in most cases inherently fuzzy,
and therefore offers a particularly complex and challenging scenario. The
results show that our new combined measure that utilizes different weighted
measures together in rankings, performs the best in terms of precision and
recall. It should be used when ranking annotation intervals according to a
given query interval in cultural heritage information retrieval. Our approach
intends to be generalizable: overlapping and closeness may be calculated
between any two fuzzy temporal intervals. The presented procedure of using user
evaluation results as a basis for assigning weights for overlapping and
closeness could potentially be used to reveal weights in other domains and
purposes as well. Keywords: Fuzzy sets / Time / Information retrieval / Cultural heritage | |||
| Examining working memory load and congruency effects on affordances and conventions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 561-571 | |
| Jeremiah D. Still; Veronica J. Dark | |||
| Although there is a debate about whether designers should draw a distinction
between perceptual affordances and cultural conventions, there are few
behavioral studies. We examined the impact of working memory load and expected
button-to-action mapping congruency on affordances and conventions. The
findings suggest both sides of the debate are correct. Learned conventions were
found to structure responses towards expected actions, just like affordances,
but affordance-based interactions were not affected by memory load while
convention-based actions were. Therefore, designers ought to employ perceptual
affordances when possible and when not feasible they ought to reuse established
conventions. Additionally, evidence is presented that violating expected
affordance-based and convention-based button-to-action mappings caused a
similar performance cost. We believe that after the initial learning period,
conventions play a critical role in the perception of a design's available
actions just as perceptual affordances do. Keywords: Affordance / Convention / Interaction design | |||
| 'To play or not to play': A cross-temporal investigation using hedonic and instrumental perspectives to explain user intentions to explore a technology | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 572-588 | |
| Massimo Magni; M. Susan Taylor; Viswanath Venkatesh | |||
| The present research extends prior work on the relationship between users
and technology by examining users' intention to explore a technology. Drawing
on exploration and individual motivation theories, we developed and tested a
model examining the effects of hedonic (i.e., personal innovativeness and
cognitive absorption) and instrumental (i.e., performance expectancy and image
enhancement) factors on individuals' intentions to explore a technology over
time. Based on a study of 94 users exposed to a new technology, with
measurements taken at two points in time, we found that both instrumental and
hedonic factors affect individuals' intentions to explore, but their effects
change over time such that as time goes by, the effect of personal
innovativeness decreases and performance expectancy increases. In addition to
our contributions and implications for research on technology acceptance, we
present practical implications both for developers and managers, with a view
toward helping the development and deployment of technologies that satisfy the
evolution of users' needs over time. Keywords: Intention to explore / Time / User behavior / Hedonic and instrumental
perspectives | |||
| Birds of a feather: How personality influences blog writing and reading | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 589-602 | |
| Jamy Li; Mark Chignell | |||
| The rapid development of blogs as a social networking tool has greatly
increased the number of people who are expressing themselves in text published
online. As yet little is known about the social psychology of online
interaction using recently developed Web 2.0 functionalities. To what extent do
principles of social psychology carry over into the online domain and how can
appropriate use of those principles assist in activities such as community
building, e-commerce, marketing, and personalization of services? There would
seem to be a large number of novel research questions that can be posed with
respect to online interaction. One pertinent question concerns the extent to
which compatibility of personality influences online interaction. We
investigated this question in terms of hypotheses derived from the personality
research literature, using a two-part experiment. In the first study, eight
participants wrote blogs in two distinct genres (personal diaries and
commentaries) and rated their own personalities. In the second study 12
different participants judged the personality of authors as implied in the blog
texts created in the first study. Those participants also completed a
personality questionnaire and rated their attraction to the blog text author.
Readers of the blog corpus were able to consistently judge the personality of
the writers based solely on the text that they wrote. Moreover, they followed a
well-established social rule regarding interpersonal attraction in real-life
interaction. Blog readers were significantly more attracted to blog writers
with more similar personalities -- offering support that in a blog environment,
"birds of a feather flock together." Emotion word use in the blog corpus
correlated with writer's personality, suggesting that online personality may be
signalled by linguistic cues. The two most popular genres of blog writing,
personal journal and commentary, differed in how accurately readers judged
author personality traits. Based on the results obtained it is suggested that
personality is an important determinant and that further research on how people
communicate with blogs will be relevant to social network analysis and to
marketing. Keywords: Blogs / Personality theory / Interpersonal attraction / Computer-mediated
communication / Blog genre | |||
| A human motor behavior model for distal pointing tasks | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 603-615 | |
| Regis Kopper; Doug A. Bowman; Mara G. Silva; Ryan P. McMahan | |||
| Models of human motor behavior are well known as an aid in the design of
user interfaces (UIs). Most current models apply primarily to desktop
interaction, but with the development of non-desktop UIs, new types of motor
behaviors need to be modeled. Distal pointing -- pointing directly at a target
that is remotely situated with respect to the input device -- is such a motor
behavior. A model of distal pointing would be particularly useful in the
comparison of different interaction techniques, because the performance of such
techniques is highly dependent on user strategy, making controlled studies
difficult to perform. Inspired by Fitts' law, we studied four possible models
and concluded that movement time for a distal pointing task is best described
as a function of the angular amplitude of movement and the angular size of the
target. Contrary to Fitts' law, our model shows that the angular size has a
much larger effect on movement time than the angular amplitude and that the
growth in the difficulty of the tasks is quadratic, rather than linear. We
estimated the model's parameters experimentally with a correlation coefficient
of 96%. Keywords: HCI models of human motor behavior / Fitts' law / Distal pointing | |||
| Supporting intelligent and trustworthy maritime path planning decisions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 616-626 | |
| M. L. Cummings; Mariela Buchin; Geoffrey Carrigan; Birsen Donmez | |||
| The risk of maritime collisions and groundings has dramatically increased in
the past five years despite technological advancements such as GPS-based
navigation tools and electronic charts, which may add to, instead of reduce,
workload. We propose that an automated path planning tool for littoral
navigation can reduce workload and improve the overall system efficiency,
particularly under time pressure. To this end, a maritime automated path
planner (MAPP) was developed, incorporating information requirements developed
from a cognitive task analysis, with special emphasis on designing for trust.
Human-in-the-loop experimental results showed that MAPP was successful in
reducing the time required to generate an optimized path, as well as reducing
path lengths. The results also showed that while users gave the tool high
acceptance ratings, they rated the MAPP as average for trust, which we propose
is the appropriate level of trust for such a system. Keywords: Path planning / Decision support / Trust / Maritime / Navigation | |||
| Beyond being there? Evaluating augmented digital records | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 627-640 | |
| Vaiva Kalnikaite; Steve Whittaker | |||
| Technological advances have made possible a new generation of digital
prosthetic memory devices (or memory aids). Yet we currently know little about
when, how and why these devices might be useful. We evaluated two novel
prosthetic memory devices in naturalistic and controlled learning settings.
Both devices provide controlled access to annotated digital records of
lectures, potentially freeing students from taking detailed notes, allowing
them to re-access lecture recordings whenever they choose. Digital records had
benefits over traditional learning aids (e.g. handouts/personal notes):
Students were more accurate in answering class quizzes using digital records,
and spontaneous digital records usage outside lectures showed strategic access
during important aspects of the course. Native speakers who used digital
records performed better on coursework, and non-native language speakers used
digital records extensively. Despite being a verbatim record, digital records
did not substitute for attendance: students who had attended lectures performed
better on quizzes and final coursework and few students listened to lectures
from beginning to end. Digital records are thus a highly promising teaching
tool, but prosthetic memory devices are best understood as working in synergy
with current tools to aid human memory, rather than replacing it. We conclude
by discussing potential theory and design implications. Keywords: Memory / Prosthetic memory / Digital record / Speech browsing / Speech
retrieval / Digital notes / Digital pictures / Empirical evaluation /
Quantitative methods | |||
| A framework and computer system for knowledge-level acquisition, representation, and reasoning with process knowledge | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 641-668 | |
| José Manuel Gómez-Pérez; Michael Erdmann; Mark Greaves; Oscar Corcho; Richard Benjamins | |||
| The development of knowledge-based systems is usually approached through the
combined skills of software and knowledge engineers (SEs and KEs, respectively)
and of subject matter experts (SMEs). One of the most critical steps in this
task aims at transferring knowledge from SMEs' expertise to formal,
machine-readable representations, which allow systems to reason with such
knowledge. However, this process is costly and error prone. Alleviating such
knowledge acquisition bottleneck requires enabling SMEs with the means to
produce the target knowledge representations, minimizing the intervention of
KEs. This is especially difficult in the case of complex knowledge types like
processes. The analysis of scientific domains like Biology, Chemistry, and
Physics uncovers: (i) that process knowledge is the single most frequent type
of knowledge occurring in such domains and (ii) specific solutions need to be
devised in order to allow SMEs to represent it in a computational form. We
present a framework and computer system for the acquisition and representation
of process knowledge in scientific domains by SMEs. We propose methods and
techniques to enable SMEs to acquire process knowledge from the domains, to
formally represent it, and to reason about it. We have developed an abstract
process metamodel and a library of problem solving methods (PSMs), which
support these tasks, respectively providing the terminology for SME-tailored
process diagrams and an abstract formalization of the strategies needed for
reasoning about processes. We have implemented this approach as part of the
DarkMatter system and formally evaluated it in the context of the intermediate
evaluation of Project Halo, an initiative aiming at the creation of question
answering systems by SMEs. Keywords: Subject matter experts / Process knowledge / Knowledge acquisition /
Knowledge representation / Reasoning / Problem solving methods / Usability /
Evaluation | |||
| A study of demographic embodiments of product recommendation agents in electronic commerce | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 669-688 | |
| Lingyun Qiu; Izak Benbasat | |||
| Product Recommendation Agents (PRAs) and other web-based decision aids are
deployed extensively to provide online shoppers with virtual advising services.
While the design of PRA's functional features has received a high degree of
attention in academic studies, the social aspects of human-PRA interactions are
comparatively less explored. This paper investigates the potential of enhancing
users' social experiences of interacting with an anthropomorphic PRA (i.e., an
agent with human-like characteristics, such as facial expressions, body
gestures, or speech output) by manipulating its demographic embodiments. The
two demographic variables assessed are ethnicity and gender. As suggested by
similarity-attraction theory and social identity theory, the results of our
laboratory experiment reveal that PRAs that match the ethnicity, though not the
gender, of their users are perceived as more sociable, more enjoyable, and more
useful to interact with than the mismatched ones. More interestingly, the
"matching-up" effects of ethnicity are more significant among female users than
males. Implications for practitioners on how to use an anthropomorphic agent's
demographic characteristics to enhance users' interaction experience are also
discussed. Keywords: Electronic commerce / Product recommendation agent / Anthropomorphic
interface / Avatar / Ethnicity / Gender / Social presence / Perceived enjoyment
/ Perceived usefulness | |||
| Facets of visual aesthetics | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 689-709 | |
| Morten Moshagen; Meinald T. Thielsch | |||
| Visual aesthetics has been shown to critically affect a variety of
constructs such as perceived usability, satisfaction, and pleasure. Given the
importance of visual aesthetics in human-computer interaction, it is vital that
it is adequately assessed. The present research aimed at providing a precise
operational definition and to develop a new measure of perceived visual
aesthetics of websites. Construction of the Visual Aesthetics of Website
Inventory (VisAWI) was based on a comprehensive and broad definition of visual
aesthetics so that the resulting instrument would completely describe the
domain of interest. Four interrelated facets of perceived visual aesthetics of
websites were identified and validated in a series of seven studies. Simplicity
and Diversity have repeatedly been treated as formal parameters of aesthetic
objects throughout the history of empirical aesthetics, Colors are a critical
property of aesthetic objects, and Craftsmanship addresses the skillful and
coherent integration of the relevant design dimensions. These four facets
jointly represent perceived visual aesthetics, but are still distinguishable
from each other and carry unique meaning. The subscales contained in the VisAWI
demonstrate good internal consistencies. Evidence for the convergent,
divergent, discriminative, and concurrent validity of the VisAWI is provided.
Overall, the present research suggests that the VisAWI appears to be a sound
measure of visual aesthetics of websites comprising facets of both practical
and theoretical interest. Keywords: Aesthetics / Assessment / Beauty / Design / Measurement / Website | |||
| The impact of anonymity on weblog credibility | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 710-718 | |
| Thomas Chesney; Daniel K. S. Su | |||
| A blog, or weblog, is an online diary whose writer is known as a blogger.
Many bloggers choose to publish anonymously. This paper examines whether a blog
by an anonymous blogger will be perceived as being any more or less credible
than one by an identifiable blogger. Two studies were conducted in the UK to
examine this, with one of the two studies being replicated in Malaysia. The
first study presented respondents with a blog entry in one of three conditions:
where the blogger was fully identifiable with a photograph, where only the age
and sex of the blogger were revealed, and where only an alias was given for the
blogger. Multi item constructs were used to measure the credibility of the blog
and the blogger. No differences were found. Study 2 examined whether this was
due to the presentation of the blog entry. This time respondents were shown one
of two blog posts which conveyed exactly the same information and revealed
exactly the same information about the blogger. One post introduced a number of
spelling/grammar/punctuation errors. Results show that the well presented
blog's writer was perceived as being more credible than the writer of the badly
presented blog, but there was no difference in the credibility of the blog
itself. The implications of the results are discussed with reference to the use
of blogs as a knowledge sharing tool. Keywords: Perceived credibility / Computer mediated communication | |||
| Cultural differences, experience with social networks and the nature of "true commitment" in Facebook | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 719-728 | |
| Asimina Vasalou; Adam N. Joinson; Delphine Courvoisier | |||
| Formed on an analysis of design practices, the behaviour chain model
stipulates that social network designer's ultimate aim is to encourage users to
adopt the social network site by entering a phase of true commitment. During
this phase, social network users are driven to connect to known or unknown
others by engaging in instrumental uses that create value and content and
involve others, while staying active and loyal by investing time in the site.
This paper investigates how designer's intentions, as captured by the behaviour
chain model, materialise through users' reported practices in the social
network site Facebook. A total of 423 Facebook users from 5 countries answered
a questionnaire that allowed us to examine how 2 user characteristics,
experience with the site, and culture, shape the nature of true commitment. Our
findings show that experience with the site and even more so, culture, have an
effect on users' motivations for using Facebook, as well as their instrumental
uses and the time they invest on the site. This analysis reifies the behaviour
chain model by allowing designers to understand how the features they design
are embodied in users' practices. Keywords: Social network sites / Facebook / Behaviour chain model / Experience /
Culture / Motivations / Uses | |||
| An adaptive e-questionnaire for measuring user perceived portal quality | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 729-745 | |
| Babis Magoutas; Kay-Uwe Schmidt; Gregoris Mentzas; Ljiljana Stojanovic | |||
| In this paper we describe an adaptive e-questionnaire system that can be
used for measuring user feedback concerning the quality of portals and
e-services. The proposed system applies three axes of adaptation: based on
real-time feedback from users through questionnaires, based on problems
encountered by the user and based on metadata of the pages visited by the user.
The system is based on a model for adaptive quality measurement (MAQM), which
comprises different ontologies including concepts regarding the quality of
portal and e-services, the questions and questionnaires, the portal
characteristics (e.g. page types), the user behavior and the user-encountered
problems. The results of evaluating the system's usefulness in an e-government
portal are indicative of the value added of our approach. The user experience
associated with the quality assessment process is improved and the portal
provider gets better feedback in terms of quantity and quality. Keywords: Adaptive / E-questionnaire / Personalization / Quality measurement /
Ontology / e-Government | |||
| Spatial learning in a virtual multilevel building: Evaluating three exocentric view aids | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 746-759 | |
| Zhiqiang Luo; Wenshu Luo; Christopher D. Wickens; I-Ming Chen | |||
| The present study explores how the design of the exocentric view aid affects
the acquisition of survey knowledge in virtual environments. The exocentric
view was provided by either a 3D floor map, a 3D building map or the elevation
of viewpoint in air. Participants navigated a virtual multilevel building and
their survey knowledge was measured by the judgment of spatial relative
direction. The results showed that (1) the accuracy of spatial judgment along
the horizontal direction and response time were improved for participants with
the exocentric view aid; (2) the accuracy of spatial judgment along the
vertical direction was worst in the condition with a 3D floor map; (3) in
general participants with a 3D building map performed best. The data suggested
that the large scale of an exocentric view aid and the increased number of
exocentric perspective through which the spatial layout is observed can
facilitate the acquisition of survey knowledge in a virtual building. Potential
applications of the findings include the design of a 3D map for navigation in
both real and virtual buildings. Keywords: Virtual environment / Navigation aid / Spatial learning / Exocentric view | |||
| Fieldwork for requirements: Frameworks for mobile healthcare applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 760-776 | |
| G. Doherty; J. McKnight; S. Luz | |||
| Ethnographic approaches to study of work in the field have been widely
adopted by HCI researchers as resources for investigation of work settings and
for requirements elicitation. Although the value of fieldwork for design is
widely recognised, difficulties surround the exploitation of fieldwork data
within the design process. Since not every development project can support or
justify large-scale field investigation, the issue of how to build on previous
work within a domain is particularly important. In this paper we consider this
issue in the context of development of mobile healthcare applications. Many
such systems will be built in the coming years, and already a number of
influential studies have derived concepts from fieldwork data and used them to
support analysis of healthcare work. Using a patient review process as an
example, we examine how the concepts from such exemplar studies can be
leveraged to analyse fieldwork data, and to facilitate requirements
elicitation. The concepts, previous interpretation within the domain,
prototypical requirements and associated critique together provide a framework
for analysis. The concepts are used to highlight issues that must be addressed
and to derive requirements. We make the case that these concepts are not "value
free" and that the course of our analysis is significantly altered through the
palette of concepts used. The methodological implications of this proposition
are also considered. Keywords: Healthcare / Mobile applications / Requirements / Conceptual frameworks /
Fieldwork | |||
| The effects of gender differences on operational performance and satisfaction with car navigation systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 777-787 | |
| Pei-Chun Lin; Li-Wen Chien | |||
| This study investigates whether gender differences have an impact on the
definition of good interface design and whether manufacturers should develop
interfaces that fit small-display portable car navigation systems (CNSs) based
on gender. This work adopted an experimental design for collecting data from
three tasks -- locating points, planning routes, and searching polygons -- each
emphasizing a different aspect of way-finding. Study results show that gender,
the CNS interface the participant used, and a combination of the two predict a
person's operational performance and satisfaction with a CNS. This study's
results provide a better understanding of whether manufacturers should develop
interfaces that fit a CNS's small display based on gender. Keywords: Small display / Car navigation system / User interface / Gender difference | |||
| Influence of personality and individual abilities on the sense of presence experienced in anxiety triggering virtual environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 788-801 | |
| Ivan Alsina-Jurnet; José Gutiérrez-Maldonado | |||
| In the literature, there are few studies of the human factors involved in
the engagement of presence. The present study aims to investigate the influence
of five user characteristics -- test anxiety, spatial intelligence, verbal
intelligence, personality and computer experience -- on the sense of presence.
This is the first study to investigate the influence of spatial intelligence on
the sense of presence, and the first to use an immersive virtual reality system
to investigate the relationship between users' personality characteristics and
presence. The results show a greater sense of presence in test anxiety
environments than in a neutral environment. Moreover, high test anxiety
students feel more presence than their non-test anxiety counterparts. Spatial
intelligence and introversion also influence the sense of presence experienced
by high test anxiety students exposed to anxiety triggering virtual
environments. These results may help to identify new groups of patients likely
to benefit from virtual reality exposure therapy. Keywords: Individual differences / Anxiety / Personality / Intelligence / Sense of
presence / Virtual reality | |||
| Information technologies and transitions in the lives of 55-65-year-olds: The case of colliding life interests | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 803-821 | |
| Antti Salovaara; Asko Lehmuskallio; Leif Hedman; Paula Valkonen; Jaana Näsänen | |||
| More and more people entering the stage of retirement at around age 55-65
are healthy, active, and also very computer-literate. This trend is rapidly
changing the common image of late-midlife technology users, which rests on the
assumption that they find it difficult to embrace new technologies and also
that their main interests are health related. Although technology use and
lifestyles are changing, however, many other aspects of life remain the same.
One of these aspects is that of the transitions, or life changes, that
generally take place in these years. Besides retirement, these transitions
include changes in health, housing, social interaction, work life, and personal
finance. People develop different ways of coping with these transitions, which
brings up interesting issues related to the late midlife stage. This paper
presents a diary-aided interview study of late middle-age adults (N=24) in
Finland and Sweden with a focus on the interplay between technologies and
transitions. Transitions were found to play a part in how the life interests of
late middle-aged persons are often conflictive, forcing them to choose from
among various 'possible selves'. At its best, technology can help alleviate
these tensions. This finding is exemplified in the paper's discussion of two
design implications associated with particular clashes of interests, related to
how daily activities are organized and how contact is maintained with one's
friends and family. Keywords: Late middle age / Later midlife / Colliding life interests / Transitions /
Life changes / Coping strategies | |||
| Effects of pre-game stories on feelings of presence and evaluation of computer games | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 822-833 | |
| Namkee Park; Kwan Min Lee; Seung-A Annie Jin; Sukhee Kang | |||
| Two experiments examined the effects of exposure to a pre-game story prior
to playing a computer game. In Experiment 1, participants played a computer
game after watching a 5 min pre-game story video about the main character of
the game. Prior exposure to the pre-game story positively influenced
participants' feelings of presence and their game evaluation. The effect of
pre-game story exposure on game evaluation was mediated by participants'
feelings of presence. When a comparison between participants who watched the
pre-game story and those who watched a non-story video was conducted, no
mediating role of feelings of presence was found. In Experiment 2, participants
read a movie script before playing the game. Its results partially replicated
those of Experiment 1 with no significant mediating role of feelings of
presence. The implications of the current study were discussed with respect to
(1) studies on stories in computer games, (2) presence research, and (3) the
design of computer games. Keywords: Computer games / Pre-game stories / Game evaluation / Physical presence /
Self-presence / Computer game design | |||
| Fostering trust in virtual project teams: Towards a design framework grounded in a TrustWorthiness ANtecedents (TWAN) schema | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 834-850 | |
| Ellen Rusman; Jan van Bruggen; Peter Sloep; Rob Koper | |||
| Several collaboration problems in virtual project teams that work in
knowledge-intensive contexts can be attributed to a hampered process of
interpersonal trust formation. Solutions to trust formation problems need to be
based on an understanding of how interpersonal trust forms in face-to-face
project teams as well as on insight into how this process differs in virtual
teams. Synthesizing literature from various disciplines, we propose a model for
the formation of interpersonal trust between project team members. Taking this
model as a starting point, we analyse how virtual settings may alter or even
obstruct the process of trust formation. One method to improve the formation of
interpersonal trust in virtual settings is to facilitate the assessment of
trustworthiness. This can be done by making information available about
individual virtual project team members. Previous research in virtual project
teams focussed principally on the medium by which information is spread, for
example, by phone, mail, or videoconferencing. Most researchers failed to take
the specific content of the information into account, although there is general
agreement that personal, non-task-related information is important to foster
trust. For this, we propose to use the antecedents of trustworthiness, which
until now have mainly been used as a framework to measure trust, as a design
framework instead. This framework of antecedents can also be used to determine
which type of information is relevant to assess each other's trustworthiness.
We review existing literature on the antecedents of trustworthiness and extend
the well-accepted antecedents of 'ability', 'benevolence' and 'integrity' with
several other antecedents, such as 'communality' and 'accountability'.
Together, these form the TrustWorthiness ANtecedents (TWAN) schema. We describe
how these antecedents can be used to determine which information is relevant
for team members assessing others' trustworthiness. In future research we will
first verify this extended cognitive schema of trustworthiness (TWAN)
empirically and then apply it to the design of artefacts or guidelines, such as
a personal identity profile to support the assessment of trustworthiness in
virtual project teams. Keywords: Trust / Trustworthiness / Artefact design / Virtual team / Collaboration /
Impression formation / Identity / Profile | |||
| Affect expression in ECAs: Application to politeness displays | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 851-871 | |
| RadosLaw Niewiadomski; Catherine Pelachaud | |||
| In this paper we present our embodied conversational agent (ECA) capable of
displaying a vast set of facial expressions to communicate its emotional states
as well as its social relations. Our agent is able to superpose and mask its
emotional states as well as fake or inhibit them. We defined complex facial
expressions as expressions arising from these displays. In the following, we
describe a model based on fuzzy methods that enables to generate complex facial
expressions of emotions. It uses fuzzy similarity to compute the degree of
resemblance between facial expressions of the ECA. We also present an algorithm
that adapts the facial behaviour of the agent depending on its social
relationship with the interactants. This last algorithm is based on the theory
of politeness by Brown and Levinson (1987). It outputs complex facial
expressions that are socially adequate. Keywords: Embodied conversational agent / Facial expressions / Non-verbal politeness /
Fuzzy similarity / Social context | |||
| Human-centred design methods: Developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 873-898 | |
| Ben Robins; Ester Ferrari; Kerstin Dautenhahn; Gernot Kronreif; Barbara Prazak-Aram; Gert-jan Gelderblom; Bernd Tanja; Francesca Caprino; Elena Laudanna; Patrizia Marti | |||
| This article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for
robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that
develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project
investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children
with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to
collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article
explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for
children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation
with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play
needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic
toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children's development.
Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the
development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing
out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and
applications involving human-robot interactions. Keywords: Robot assisted play / Human-centred design / Assistive technology /
Human-robot interaction | |||
| Effects of specialization in computers, web sites, and web agents on e-commerce trust | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 899-912 | |
| Yoon Jeon Koh; S. Shyam Sundar | |||
| Suppose you went shopping online for wines and visited several sites, each
recommending particular reds and whites. Which kind of site are you likely to
trust more -- costco.com or wine.com? The specialization implied by the latter
suggests more expertise in the domain of wines. Does it mean that you are more
likely to purchase wines recommended by sites such as wine.com and
vintagecellars.com.au than those recommended by generalist sites such as
costco.com and samsclub.com? Our study attempts to answer this question by
experimentally investigating how specialization in media technology
(specifically, web agent, web site, and computer) influences individuals'
perception and attitudes towards sources in online communication, particularly
consumer trust and purchase behaviors in e-commerce. All subjects (N=124) went
to a specially constructed online site with a virtual shopping cart for a
wine-purchasing task, as part of a 2 (specialist vs. generalist web
agent)×2 (specialist vs. generalist web site)×2 (specialist
computer vs. generalist computer) between-subjects experiment. Results indicate
significant main effects and interactions of the agent, site, and computer
specialization on trust and purchase decision time. Theoretical and practical
implications are discussed. Keywords: Specialization / Media equation / Source layers in HCI / Web agent / Web
site / Category-based perception / Generalist technologies / Domain expertise | |||
| Consumer trust and distrust: An issue of website design | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 913-934 | |
| Carol Xiaojuan Ou; Choon Ling Sia | |||
| Researchers have long speculated about the distinction between trust and
distrust, yet the majority of studies on trust have treated them as essentially
the same construct on opposite ends of a continuum. In order to resolve this
ambiguity, we propose a theoretical framework to investigate the antecedents
and influences of trust and distrust in the online shopping context, relying on
the literature of website design and consumer trust, ambivalence theories, as
well as emerging studies on distrust in the work place. Our findings indicate
that trust and distrust are two separate concepts by reason of their distinct
cognitions, different antecedents and different influences on consequent
outcomes. In particular, the results show that specific website design
attributes have distinct effects on shaping consumers' trust and distrust.
These findings suggest new ways in which website attributes can be fine-tuned
by website designers and managers. Keywords: Consumer trust / Distrust / Website design / Functional perception (FP) /
Motivating perception (MP) | |||