topauthor: Stage_J* : Human-Computer Interaction Bibliography Search

[1] An Empirical Study of the Effects of Three Think-Aloud Protocols on Identification of Usability Problems Evaluation Methods/Usability Evaluation / Bruun, Anders / Stage, Jan Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'15: Human-Computer Interaction, Part II 2015-09-14 v.2 p.159-176

Keywords: Usability evaluation; Thinking aloud; Verbalization; Think-aloud protocols; Empirical study

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: Think-aloud is a de facto standard in user-based usability evaluation to verbalize what a user is experiencing. Despite its qualities, it has been argued that thinking aloud affects the task solving process. This paper reports from an empirical study of the effect of three think-aloud protocols on the identified usability problems. The three protocols were traditional, active listening and coaching. The study involved 43 test subjects distributed on the three think-aloud conditions and a silent control condition in a between-subject design. The results show that the three think-aloud protocols facilitated identification of the double number of usability problems compared to the silent condition, while the problems identified by the three think-aloud protocol were comparable. Our results do not support the common emphasis on the Coaching protocol, while we have seen that the Traditional protocol performs surprisingly well.

[2] Barefoot usability evaluations / Bruun, Anders / Stage, Jan Behaviour and Information Technology 2014-11-02 v.33 n.11 p.1148-1167

Link to Article at Taylor & Francis

Summary: Usability evaluations provide software development teams with insights on the degree to which a software application enables a user to achieve his/her goals, how fast these goals can be achieved, how easy it is to learn and how satisfactory it is in use. Although usability evaluations are crucial in the process of developing software systems with a high level of usability, their use is still limited in the context of small software development companies. Several approaches have been proposed to support software development practitioners (SWPs) in conducting usability evaluations and this paper presents two in-depth empirical studies of supporting SWPs by training them to become barefoot usability evaluators. Findings show that the SWPs after 30 hours of training obtained considerable abilities in identifying usability problems and that this approach revealed a high level of downstream utility. Results also show that the SWPs created relaxed conditions for the test users when acting as test monitors but experienced problems with making users think aloud. Considering the quality of problem descriptions, we found that the SWPs were better at providing clear and precise problem descriptions than at describing the impact, cause, user actions and providing data support for observations.

[3] Active Collaborative Learning: Supporting Software Developers in Creating Redesign Proposals Research Papers / Bruun, Anders / Jensen, Janne Juul / Skov, Mikael B. / Stage, Jan Proceedings of IFIP HCSE 2014: International Conference on Human-Centered Software Engineering 2014-09-16 p.1-18

Keywords: Usability evaluation; usability problem; redesign proposal; developer involvement; active collaborative learning; exploratory study

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: Redesign proposals have been suggested as means to improve the feedback from usability evaluation to software development. Yet redesign proposals are usually created by usability specialists without any involvement of the software developers who will implement the proposals. This paper reports from an exploratory study where redesign proposals were created in an active and collaborative learning process that involved both software developers and usability specialists. The focus was on the support that the developers needed in order to contribute constructively to improve the usability of the system. The findings show that this process had a considerable impact on the developers' understanding of the usability problems, especially the weaknesses of the system. They were able to contribute constructively to create redesign proposals, and they found the workshop very useful for their future efforts to eliminate the usability problems that have been identified.

[4] Usability Engineering in the Wild: How Do Practitioners Integrate Usability Engineering in Software Development? Research Papers / Bornoe, Nis / Stage, Jan Proceedings of IFIP HCSE 2014: International Conference on Human-Centered Software Engineering 2014-09-16 p.199-216

Keywords: Usability; usability engineering; user experience (UX); software development; agile development; usability practitioners

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: It has been argued that too much research on usability engineering is incoherent with the processes, and settings being the realities for practitioners. In this paper we want to extend the existing knowledge about usability engineering in the wild. Through 12 semi-structured interviews we wanted to get an understanding of how usability is perceived, and practiced in reality. We found that our participants primarily focus on upfront work to support the design, and implementation process. They implement usability engineering through informal evaluations, and by following a set of local de facto standards. We want to extend the existing body of knowledge about usability engineering in practice, to support the development of methods aimed at practitioners.

[5] Creating and Using Personas in Software Development: Experiences from Practice Late Breaking Results / Billestrup, Jane / Stage, Jan / Bruun, Anders / Nielsen, Lene / Nielsen, Kira S. Proceedings of IFIP HCSE 2014: International Conference on Human-Centered Software Engineering 2014-09-16 p.251-258

Keywords: Personas; software development practice; persona creation

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: Personas is a technique that supports designing and engineering interactive systems with the focus on the end-users. This paper reports from a case study, where we interviewed four software developers about their usage of personas in software development practice. The purpose of was to identify the practices of personas development in the software development industry. How the respondents perceive personas and its use does not always correlate with what is described as best practice in the literature. We found that practitioners are not using personas as stated in the literature but are developing their own practices both in regards to when and how personas are created.

[6] Improvement of Novice Software Developers' Understanding about Usability: The Role of Empathy Toward Users as a Case of Emotional Contagion HCI and Design Education / Lizano, Fulvio / Stage, Jan HCI International 2014: 16th International Conference on HCI, Part I: Theories, Methods, and Tools 2014-06-22 v.1 p.207-218

Keywords: Software development; usability; understanding of usability; empathy towards users; emotional contagion

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: There are several obstacles when it comes to integrating Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) activities into software development projects. In particular, a lack of understanding on the part of novice software developers regarding usability is one of the most cited problems related to this integration. Observation of usability evaluation by these developers has been cited in the literature as an alternative to improve their understanding about usability due to the fact that, among other things, this improves the level of empathy with users. In this paper we present the results of a quasi-experiment which explores the origin of this improvement. Our study suggests that the empathy of novice developers towards users could be originated by Emotional Contagion (EC) of these developers. This EC occurs unconsciously in activities where these developers can observe users working with the software. The present research is an initial approximation as to the relation which EC and empathy have in order to improve the novice software developers' understanding of usability.

[7] Integrating Usability Evaluations into Scrum: A Case Study Based on Remote Synchronous User Testing Evaluation Methods, Techniques and Case Studies / Lizano, Fulvio / Sandoval, Maria Marta / Stage, Jan HCI International 2014: 16th International Conference on HCI, Part I: Theories, Methods, and Tools 2014-06-22 v.1 p.500-509

Keywords: Software development; usability evaluation; Remote Synchronous User Testing (RS); SCRUM; integrating RS into SCRUM

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: The tendency to empower users in the software development process encourages the continuing search for ways to reconcile the interests of agile methodologies and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) activities. The practice of agile methods, e.g. Scrum, is normally focused on high productivity, sometimes leaving aside other important aspects of software development such as usability. On the other hand, HCI methods usually attempt to reach solid conclusions through extensive and formal studies, which can consume significant resources and time. In this paper we present an instrumental single case study which offers an example of how usability evaluations can be integrated into a Scrum project by using Remote Synchronous User Testing (RS). Our approach suggests that the RS process should be conducted by the same developers who integrate the developing team. Our results indicate that RS can be used as a strategy to efficiently and easily integrate usability evaluations into Scrum projects. The most valuable benefit obtained in this integration is related to the opportune feedback offered by usability testing, which can be incorporated to the developing process immediately as is provided through agile principles. Other elements of our approach could help solve other problems normally present in other efforts made in order to integrate usability evaluations into agile methods. The major problem in our case study was related to the difficulty presented by software developers in terms of changing their usual focus when they have to conduct usability evaluations.

[8] E-government and the Digital Agenda for Europe Design for the Web / Billestrup, Jane / Stage, Jan DUXU 2014: Third International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability, Part II: User Experience Design for Diverse Interaction Platforms and Environments 2014-06-22 v.2 p.71-80

Keywords: E-Government; Digitalisation; Usability; Self-service systems; E-Government providers; Digital agenda for Europe

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: Several initiatives in regards to digitalisation citizens' services have been launched, both in the European Union and in Denmark. Several problems have been reported in related work in regards to lack of accessibility and usability of e-government self-service solutions. The objective of this paper was "How are software providers developing e-government self-service solutions that should be usable for all citizens?" we conducted 11 phone interviews with self-service providers in Denmark. We found that no citizens are involved in the development process and only few of the self-service solutions are usability evaluated before being released.

[9] Persona Usage in Software Development: Advantages and Obstacles User Modeling and User Focus II / Billestrup, Jane / Stage, Jan / Nielsen, Lene / Hansen, Kira Storgaard Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions 2014-03-23 p.359-364

Keywords: Personas, software development, questionnaire survey, grounded theory

www.thinkmind.org/index.php

Summary: The Personas technique has been promoted as a strong tool for providing software developers with a better understanding of the prospective users of their software. This paper reports from a questionnaire survey regarding knowledge about Personas and their usage in software development companies. The questionnaire survey was conducted in a limited geographical area to establish the extent of Personas usage within all companies in the chosen region and determine whether software development companies used Personas during the development process. Several issues were identified as reasons for either not using the technique or for poor application of it. The study showed that 55% of the respondents had never heard about Personas. Among those who had heard about the Personas technique, the following obstacles towards usage of the technique were identified: Lack of knowledge of the technique, lack of resources (time and funding), Sparse descriptions -- when applied and Personas not being integrated in the development.

[10] Is usability evaluation important: the perspective of novice software developers Short papers / Lizano, Fulvio / Sandoval, Maria M. / Bruun, Anders / Stage, Jan Proceedings of the 27th BCS International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2013-09-09 p.31

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: In this paper we present the results of a study which aims to explore the perspective of novice software developers about usability evaluation. It is important for a software organization to understand how novice developers perceive the role and importance of usability evaluation. This will permit development of effective methods and training programs that could potentially increase the application of usability evaluation. The results suggest that the perspectives of novice software developers about usability are characterized by a clear understanding about what usability evaluation is and a clear awareness about obstacles and advantages. However, our study also reveals certain shortcomings in the "usability culture" of novice developers, especially about the users' role in usability evaluation. Despite this limited "usability culture", novice developers' understanding of usability evaluation reflects a positive opinion about their participation in these activities. In addition, novice developers think that usability, in a general sense, is an important aspect of their work.

[11] Don't Text While Driving: The Effect of Smartphone Text Messaging on Road Safety during Simulated Driving Road Safety / Lyngsie, Kaspar / Pedersen, Martin S. / Stage, Jan / Vestergaard, Kim F. Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'13: Human-Computer Interaction-3 2013 v.3 p.546-563

Keywords: Driving; mobile phone; smartphone; text messaging; road safety; driver distraction; simulated driving experiment

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Summary: Text messaging on smartphones uses a full soft keyboard instead of the numeric buttons on traditional mobile phones. While being more intuitive, the lack of tactile feedback from physical buttons increases the need for user focus, which may compromise safety in certain settings. This paper reports from an empirical study of the effect of text messaging on road safety. We compared the use of a traditional mobile phone and a smartphone for writing text messages during simulated driving. The results confirm that driver performance when texting decreases considerably as there are significant increases in reaction time, car-following distance, lane violation, number of crash/near-crash incidents, perceived task load and the amount of time the driver is looking away from the road. The results also show that smartphones makes this even worse; on key performance parameters they increase the threat from text messaging while driving. These results suggest that drivers should never text while driving, especially not with a smartphone.

[12] Usability Evaluation in a Digitally Emerging Country: A Survey Study Usability Evaluation and Technology Acceptance / Lizano, Fulvio / Sandoval, Maria Marta / Bruun, Anders / Stage, Jan Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'13: Human-Computer Interaction-4 2013 v.4 p.298-305

Keywords: Usability evaluation; advantages; obstacles; digitally emerging countries

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Summary: Several emerging countries experience increasing software development activities. With the purpose of provide useful feedback on possible courses of action for increasing application of usability evaluation in such countries, this paper explores the status of usability evaluation in a digitally emerging country. Our aim is to identifying common characteristics or behavioral patterns that could be compared with digitally advanced countries. We used an online survey answered by 26 software development organizations, which gave a snapshot of the application of usability evaluation in these organizations. We found many similarities with advanced countries, several completely new obstacles more connected with software development matters and a relatively positive improvement in the lack of "usability culture". These findings suggest good conditions to improve conduction of usability evaluations in digitally emerging countries.

[13] Going Global with Personas User Preferences and Behaviour / Nielsen, Lene / Nielsen, Kira Storgaard / Stage, Jan / Billestrup, Jane Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'13: Human-Computer Interaction-4 2013 v.4 p.350-357

Keywords: personas; scenarios; cross culture; international; design

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: The persona method is widely used and commonly described both in scientific literature and in case-based blogs. Most often the descriptions point to a local context with local user groups and it is difficult to find writings on use of the method in an international context and in globally distributed teams. This paper reports from a qualitative study conducted in 2012/13 within 13 Danish companies and points to how design teams apply several different strategies when end-users are distributed worldwide. Moreover it shows how the designers value the strength of the method to provide common grounds for the team, especially for team distributed across countries.

[14] Training software development practitioners in usability testing: an assessment acceptance and prioritization / Bruun, Anders / Stage, Jan Proceedings of the 2012 Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference 2012-11-26 p.52-60

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Previous studies show that some software development practitioners without a usability background experience difficulties in understanding users and accepting that usability problems exist in their software. Also they do not prioritize fixing the problems identified by specialists. This barrier is denoted "developer mindset" and this paper empirically explores whether the barrier can be overcome by training software development practitioners to conduct usability testing. Findings show that the practitioners obtained considerable abilities in identifying usability problems as they managed to uncover 80.5% of these after 30 hours of training, which shows a high level of acceptance. Findings also reveal that the practitioners prioritized fixing 61% of the problems and we found that they successfully removed 64% in a new interface design. We conclude that this approach may pose a viable solution to overcome the barrier of developer mindset.

[15] The effect of task assignments and instruction types on remote asynchronous usability testing Usability methods / Bruun, Anders / Stage, Jan Proceedings of ACM CHI 2012 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2012-05-05 v.1 p.2117-2126

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Summary: Remote asynchronous usability testing involves users directly in reporting usability problems. Most studies of this approach employ predefined tasks to ensure that users experience specific aspects of the system, whereas other studies use no task assignments. Yet the effect of using predefined tasks is still to be uncovered. There is also limited research on instructions for users in identifying usability problems. This paper reports from a comparative study of the effect of task assignments and instruction types on the problems identified in remote asynchronous usability testing of a website for information retrieval, involving 53 prospective users. The results show that users solving predefined tasks identified significantly more usability problems with a significantly higher level of agreement than those working on their own authentic tasks. Moreover, users that were instructed by means of examples of usability problems identified significantly more usability problems than those who received a conceptual definition of usability problems.

[16] Training software developers and designers to conduct usability evaluations / Skov, Mikael Brasholt / Stage, Jan Behaviour and Information Technology 2012-04 v.31 n.4 p.425-435

Link to Article at Taylor & Francis

Summary: Many efforts to improve the interplay between usability evaluation and software development rely either on better methods for conducting usability evaluations or on better formats for presenting evaluation results in ways that are useful for software designers and developers. Both of these approaches depend on a complete division of work between developers and evaluators. This article takes a different approach by exploring whether software developers and designers can be trained to conduct their own usability evaluations. The article is based on an empirical study where 36 teams with a total of 234 first-year university students on software development and design educations were trained through an introductory course in user-based website usability testing that was taught in 40 h. They used the techniques from this course for planning, conducting, and interpreting the results of a usability evaluation of an interactive website. They gained good competence in conducting the evaluation, defining user tasks and producing a usability report, while they were less successful in acquiring skills for identifying and describing usability problems.

[17] Combining ethnography and object-orientation for mobile interaction design: Contextual richness and abstract models / Kjeldskov, Jesper / Stage, Jan International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 2012-03 v.70 n.3 p.197-217

Keywords: Mobile interaction design

Keywords: Ethnography

Keywords: Object-oriented analysis

Keywords: System development

Keywords: Mobile work

Keywords: Distributed collaboration

Link to Article at sciencedirect

Summary: There has been a lot of interest in ethnography within human -- computer interaction over the last two decades, and its relevance within systems development is today beyond question. However, one of the challenges reported is that ethnography generates findings and knowledge with such contextual richness that it can be hard to transfer into system design. In the light of recent years' push for the use of ethnography within the area of mobile human -- computer interaction, this challenge has resurfaced and is of renewed importance to the research field. In this article we describe an interdisciplinary combination of ethnography with a structured software engineering method supporting the transition from collected data to design and implementation. We explore this combination through two case studies of mobile system development for supporting distributed work activities within industrial process control. We show that when developing mobile systems ethnographic data is a highly valuable source of input for developing object-oriented models by providing contextual richness, and that in turn, objected-oriented analysis is a highly valuable method for working with ethnographic field data in systems development by supporting the creation of abstract models. Combining the two, we have a method where ethnographic field studies inform core system design.

[18] From Paper to PDA: Design and Evaluation of a Clinical Ward Instruction on a Mobile Device User Interfaces for Safety Critical Systems and Health Care 1 / Kanstrup, Anne Marie / Stage, Jan Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'09: Human-Computer Interaction 2009-08-24 v.2 p.670-683

Keywords: Interaction design; mobile system; usability evaluation; interpretive evaluation; case study

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: Mobile devices with small screens and minimal facilities for interaction are increasingly being used in complex human activities for accessing and processing information, while the user is moving. This paper presents a case study of the design and evaluation of a mobile system, which involved transformation of complex text and tables to digital format on a PDA. The application domain was an emergency medical ward, and the user group was junior registrars. We designed a PDA-based system for accessing information, focusing on the ward instruction, implemented a prototype and evaluated it for usability and utility. The evaluation results indicate significant problems in the interaction with the system as well as the extent to which the system is useful for junior registrars in their daily work.

[19] Interplay between Usability Evaluation and Software Development (I-USED 2009) Workshops / Abrahão, Silvia / Hornbæk, Kasper / Law, Effie Lai-Chong / Stage, Jan Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'09: Human-Computer Interaction 2009-08-24 v.2 p.969-970

Keywords: software development; user interface development; usability assessment; usability evaluation methods; empirical studies

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Summary: This workshop is aimed at bringing together researchers and practitioners from the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Software Engineering (SE) fields to determine the state-of-the-art in the interplay between usability evaluation and software development and to generate ideas for new and improved relations between these activities. The aim is to base the determination of the current state on empirical studies. Presentations of new ideas on how to improve the interplay between HCI & SE to the design of usable software systems should also be based on empirical studies.

[20] Let your users do the testing: a comparison of three remote asynchronous usability testing methods Usability methods / Bruun, Anders / Gull, Peter / Hofmeister, Lene / Stage, Jan Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009-04-04 v.1 p.1619-1628

Keywords: asynchronous testing, empirical study, remote testing, usability testing

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Remote asynchronous usability testing is characterized by both a spatial and temporal separation of users and evaluators. This has the potential both to reduce practical problems with securing user attendance and to allow direct involvement of users in usability testing. In this paper, we report from an empirical study where we systematically compared three methods for remote asynchronous usability testing: user-reported critical incidents, forum-based online reporting and discussion, and diary-based longitudinal user reporting. In addition, conventional laboratory-based think-aloud testing was included as a benchmark for the remote methods. The results show that each remote asynchronous method supports identification of a considerable number of usability problems. Although this is only about half of the problems identified with the conventional method, it requires significantly less time. This makes remote asynchronous methods an appealing possibility for usability testing in many software projects.

[21] Obstacles to usability evaluation in practice: a survey of software development organizations Full papers / Bak, Jakob Otkjær / Nguyen, Kim / Risgaard, Peter / Stage, Jan Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008-10-10 p.23-32

Keywords: obstacles, software development, usability evaluation

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: This paper reports from a combined questionnaire survey and interview study of obstacles for deploying usability evaluation in software development organizations. It was conducted in a limited geographical area. The purpose of the questionnaire survey was to determine whether software development organizations in that area were evaluating the usability of their software and to identify key obstacles. It revealed that 29 of 39 software development organizations conducted some form of usability evaluation. The purpose of the interview study was to gain more insight into the obstacles that were expressed. It involved 10 of the 39 software development organizations. Our results show, that the understanding of usability evaluation is a major obstacle. Furthermore, the two most significant obstacles were resource demands and the mindset of developers. These obstacles were not only an obstacle for more organizations to deploy usability evaluation, but also a concern for the software development organizations, that had deployed usability evaluations in their development process.

[22] Interaction styles in tools for developing virtual environments / Kjeldskov, Jesper / Stage, Jan Virtual Reality 2008-09 v.12 n.3 p.137-150

Keywords: Virtual environments; Development tools; Interaction styles; Empirical study

Link to Digital Content at Springer

Summary: This article discusses and compares interaction styles in development tools for virtual environments (VE). The comparison relies on a qualitative empirical study of two development processes where a command language and a direct manipulation based tool were used to develop the same virtual environment application. The command language tool proved very flexible and facilitated an even distribution of effort and progress over time, but debugging and identification of errors was very difficult. Contrasting this, the direct manipulation tool enabled faster implementation of a first prototype but did not facilitate a shorter implementation process as a whole. On the basis of these findings, the strength and weaknesses of direct manipulation for developing virtual environment applications are explored further through a comparison with a successful direct manipulation tool for developing interactive multimedia applications. The comparisons are used to identify and emphasize key requirements for virtual environment development tool interface design.

[23] Use Case Evaluation (UCE): A Method for Early Usability Evaluation in Software Development Evaluation Methods 1 / Hornbæk, Kasper / Høegh, Rune Thaarup / Pedersen, Michael Bach / Stage, Jan Proceedings of IFIP INTERACT'07: Human-Computer Interaction 2007-09-10 v.1 p.578-591

Keywords: Usability evaluation; use cases; software development

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Summary: It is often argued that usability problems should be identified as early as possible during software development, but many usability evaluation methods do not fit well in early development activities. We propose a method for usability evaluation of use cases, a widely used representation of design ideas produced early in software development processes. The method proceeds by systematic inspection of use cases with reference to a set of guidelines for usable design. To validate the method, four evaluators inspected a set of use cases for a health care application. The usability problems predicted by the evaluators were compared to the result of a conventional think-aloud test. About one fourth of the problems were identified by both think-aloud testing and use case inspection; about half of the predicted problems not found by think-aloud testing were assessed as providing useful input to early development. Qualitative data on the evaluators' experience using the method are also presented. On this background, we argue that use case inspection has a promising potential and discuss its limitations.

[24] What happened to remote usability testing?: an empirical study of three methods Usability evaluation / Andreasen, Morten Sieker / Nielsen, Henrik Villemann / Schrøder, Simon Ormholt / Stage, Jan Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2007-04-28 v.1 p.1405-1414

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: The idea of conducting usability tests remotely emerged ten years ago. Since then, it has been studied empirically, and some software organizations employ remote methods. Yet there are still few comparisons involving more than one remote method. This paper presents results from a systematic empirical comparison of three methods for remote usability testing and a conventional laboratory-based think-aloud method. The three remote methods are a remote synchronous condition, where testing is conducted in real time but the test monitor is separated spatially from the test subjects, and two remote asynchronous conditions, where the test monitor and the test subjects are separated both spatially and temporally. The results show that the remote synchronous method is virtually equivalent to the conventional method. Thereby, it has the potential to conveniently involve broader user groups in usability testing and support new development approaches. The asynchronous methods are considerably more time-consuming for the test subjects and identify fewer usability problems, yet they may still be worthwhile.

[25] Designing a mobile communicator: combining ethnography and object-oriented design Long papers: mobile / Kjeldskov, Jesper / Nielsen, Christian Monrad / Overgaard, Michael / Pedersen, Michael Bach / Stage, Jan / Stenild, Sigge Proceedings of OZCHI'06, the CHISIG Annual Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2006-11-20 p.95-102

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Communication and coordination of mobile and distributed work activities is a challenging application domain for mobile handheld devices. In this paper, we present the design of a mobile system to support communication and coordination between workers in safety-critical tasks in a power plant. The design of the system was based on ideas inherited from a communicator that was developed for a different application domain. The design was devised through a combination of ethnography and object-orientation. The mobile system we designed provides location-aware access to computerized information and process control on a handheld wireless computer terminal.