Human-Computer Interaction. Interaction Design and Usability

This study proposes the design principles considering the balance of ‘simplicity‘ and ‘helpfulness‘ based on cognitive aging. Due to the increase of the aging population, various equipments are required to better assist the elderly users. ATMs (Automatic Teller Machine) have always been considered to be equipment that is difficult for the elderly users. Then this paper discusses a new ATM interface design considering the principles. The effectiveness of the new design was examined by comparing it with a conventional ATM. The usability test results favored the new ATM design, and it is consequently accepted by many elderly users.

One goal of design rationale systems is to support designers by providing a means to record and communicate the argumentation and reasoning behind the design process. However, there are several inherent limitations to developing systems that effectively capture and utilize design rationale. The dynamic and contextual nature of design and our inability to exhaustively analyze all possible design issues results in cognitive, capture, retrieval, and usage limitations. In addition, there are the organizational limitations that ensue when systems are deployed. In this paper we analyze the essential problems that prevent the successful development and use of design rationale systems. We argue that useful and effective design rationale systems cannot be built unless we carefully redefine the goal of design rationale systems.

The human face plays a central role in most forms of natural human interaction so we may expect that computational methods for analysis of facial information and graphical and robotic methods for synthesis of faces and facial expressions will play a growing role in human-computer and human-robot interaction. However, certain areas of face-based HCI, such as facial expression recognition and robotic facial display have lagged others, such as eye-gaze tracking, facial recognition, and conversational characters. Our goal in this paper is to review the situation in HCI with regards to the human face, and to discuss strategies which could bring more slowly developing areas up to speed.

A growing uneasiness among users with the experience of current product user interfaces mounts pressure on interaction designers to innovate user interface conventions. In previous research we have shown that a study of the history of product interaction triggers a broader discussion of interaction qualities among designers in a team, and that the naming of interaction styles helps establish an aesthetics of interaction design. However, that research focused on one particular product field, namely industrial controllers, and it was yet to be proven, if interaction styles do have generic traits across a wider range of interactive products. In this paper we report on five years of continued research into interaction styles for telephones, kitchen equipment, HiFi products and medical devices, and we show how it is indeed possible and beneficial to formulate a set of generic interaction styles.

HCI is about how people use systems to conduct tasks in context. Most current HCI research focuses on a single or multiple users’ interaction with system(s). Compared with the user, system and task components, context is a less studied area. The emergence of ubiquitous computing, context-aware computing, and mobile computing requires system design to be adaptive and respond to aspects of setting in which the tasks are performed, including other users, devices and environments. Given the importance of context in information system design, we note that even the notion of context in HCI is not well-defined. In this paper, we review several theories of context as it relates to interaction design. We also present our Context-centered Framework which is aimed to bridging end users’ understand and designers’ designing together. The research design and expected outcomes are also presented.

The Micro-Scenario Method (MSM) is an approach to uncover the consumer needs and establish the development concepts [2]. In this study, the MSM is applied to the Information Support System for Safety related to a motorcycle and devised for application efficiency. What is devised is to make a prescriptive model up before interview research and set up the syntax rules of the problem-scenario (a description sentence of problem situation). As a result, the development efficiency is improved by the modified MSM. The communication of relevant parties can be speeded up, because the prescriptive model which keywords are structurally organized helps development actors share wide-ranging information about problem situations. Moreover, the creation time of problem-scenario can be cut, because the syntax rule of problem-scenario simplifies how to describe it. Though the modified MSM is an effort to take MSM in practical use at YAMAHA Motor Company Ltd. (YMC), the modified MSM was considered as a useful approach to reduce the workload of HCD (Human-Centred Design).

Agile Software Engineering approaches gain more and more popularity in today’s development organizations. The need for usable products is also a growing factor for organizations. Thus, their development processes have to react on this demand and have to offer approaches to integrate the factor “usability” in their development processes. The approach presented in this paper evaluates how agile software engineering models consider activities of Usability Engineering to ensure the creation of usable software products. The user-centeredness of the two agile SE models Scrum and XP has been analyzed and the question of how potential gaps can be filled without loosing the process’ agility is discussed. As requirements play a decisive role during software development, in Software Engineering as well as Usability Engineering. Therefore, different User Centered Requirements that ensure the development of usable systems served as basis for the gap-analysis.

Usability has become a critical quality factor in software systems, and it requires the adoption of a human-centered approach to software development. The inclusion of humans and their social context into the issues to consider throughout development deeply influences software development at large. Waterfall approaches are not feasible, since they are based on eliminating uncertainty from software development. On the contrary, the uncertainty of dealing with human beings, and their social or work context, makes necessary the introduction of uncertainty-based approaches into software development. HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) has a long tradition of dealing with such uncertainty during development, but most current software development practices in industry are not rooted in a human-centered approach. This paper revises the current roots of software development practices, illustrating how their limitations in dealing with uncertainty may be tackled with the adoption of well-known HCI practices.

This paper focuses on the time period between September 2005 and September 2006 where HCI research experiments were deployed in a post-hurricane Katrina disaster area. This area stretched from the cities of Waveland and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi (the epicenter of hurricane Katrina) to shelters in Baton Rouge and Houston, Texas. The HCI experiments were constructed in order to understand immediate disaster aftermath issues of a population in context of activities, information and organizational needs. The use of a Participatory Design (PD) methodology, Ethnographic techniques, and design Probes were refined over the course of the longitudinal study. Field notes were created in an iterative process with individual participants over a course of time due to the impact of shock and cognitive issues early on. These field notes then influenced a set of personas that were iterated and used as a vehicle to gather and validate field research findings and people’s needs within the disaster framework. The main goal of this paper is not to propose informational, organizational or technology solutions to the complex problems inherent in a disaster cycle, but to illustrate both the failure and success of using HCI methods in a post disaster situation. Therefore, a

disaster cycle

is outlined and described in this paper. Insights and thoughts regarding the Rescue and Recovery phases are described and notes where HCI as a practice may influence or contribute to these areas within the disaster cycle are outlined. The last part of the paper illustrates the first HCI experiment in the field and some of the iterations and findings from this practice. This first research study was undertaken at a grassroots level, yet this does not mean valuable information could not be gathered in further studies of governmental, NGOs, or businesses participating in planning, preparing or rescue and recovery efforts during a disaster. In fact, the opportunity to combine grassroots and governmental HCI research could offer immense benefits. However, as a grassroots initiative it is a level of inquiry without the constraints of political hierarchy. Given this, this paper focuses less on how HCI can be used in a more typical framework where a sponsor, such as a client and HCI worker are collaborating in HCI “workplace” research, and more on developing tools and methods within communities.

In this paper, we propose a requirements elicitation method called Scenarios, Photographic Essays and Diaries as User Probes (SPED-UP). In SPED-UP participants create photographic diaries and photographic essays themselves. Each participant creates photographic diaries to capture a day in their own life. They reflect upon their personal experiences and create photographic essays based upon this reflection. This approach enables designers to collect user data conveniently. Designers, who might be participants themselves in a participatory approach, can then analyze these experiences by forming design concepts, envision scenarios by imagining contexts of use, and create artifacts by sketching these scenarios. We also describe an exemplary workshop using the SPED-UP approach.

To reach a product’s business objectives, the requirements of all relevant stakeholders have to be analyzed and considered in the product definition. This paper focuses on the processes applied to analyze and consider the needs and expectations of two of these stakeholder groups, namely the customers and the users of a product. The processes to produce customer centered product definitions and user centered product definitions are compared, rendering visual opportunities to increase their efficiency and effectiveness by means of collaboration.

This paper presents a new process model of user-centered design that can be applied to the development of new value and future. Realizing that the widely known conventional human-centered design process, defined by ISO13407, is not always effective, here we propose a new process model and introduce an overview of activities based on this process. This aims at not only developing new value and future, but also in generating new ideas in concept planning.

This is an analysis of the changes the concept of interface is going through in the shift from the currently dominating virtuality paradigm of use to two new use paradigms, namely ubiquity and mobility; an analysis of the concomitantly shifting role of symbols in relation to the user and to the world; ending with an attempt to identify and analyze important research issues in the new situation that arises, two of which are to better understand the various ways different kinds of interface symbols can link to their real-world referents, and how to combine tracking reality with supporting the user’s own thinking.

User experience plays a more and more important role in the process of design and development for the information products. About the user experience in the field of the network-based (Internet and mobile network) application a lot of research and development teams focus on the information architecture (IA) and user interface (UI) design, they locate on the middle and front level of the products. But in the same time a very important factor of user experience is ignored: FEEDBACK-QUALITY, which is decided by the quality of telecommunication from Telecom Service Support. Through the long observation and research we find: this factor can basically influence the most network-based products.

The lack of focus on administrative interfaces often comes from management’s mandate to prioritize end user screens ahead of others. This often shortchanges a more technical class of users with unique needs and requirements. At Oracle, design heuristics for admininstrative GUIs were sourced from a multitude of sources in the corporate ecosystem. Ethnographers, software architects, designers, and the administrators themselves all contributed to bring a better understanding of this often forgotten class of user. Administrators were found to inhabit anywhere from two to five particular classifications, depending on the size of the company. Recently, an ethnographer studied one classification in greater detail, the Database Administrator, while a designer, in the course of an E-Business Suite Installer project analyzed another, the application administrator. What emerged based on the gathered data was a remarkably consistent and universal set of rules and tools that can be used to lower the total cost of ownership and increase usability, attractiveness, and satisfaction for administrative interfaces.

For the purpose of achieving the effective and efficient human-centered design, a database of problem micro scenario (p-MS) is proposed. In the concept of this system, the human scientist work first for getting the information about the user and the context of use by applying the field work methods. The information about problems discovered in the field data will be stored in the p-MS database with the tag and the ground information. Engineers who plan to manufacture something can retrieve relevant problem information from this database, thus they can shorten the time required for the early stage of development. This idea of p-MS database is believed to facilitate the human-centered design and the feasibility study will be conducted within a year from this presentation.

For further effectual tacit knowledge reusing in the process of product design, individual cognitive processes, cognitive factors, and cognitive strategies need to be realized to find the essential factors that affect the generation of tacit knowledge and control designer activities in the whole design process. But these key factors are relative to individual cognitive capability and meta-cognitive level. So, based on physical symbol system hypothesis (PSSH) and connectionism, a meta-cognition model of engineering product designer is provided to elucidate the active monitoring and consequent regulation in this paper. Designers’ cognitive activities in the process of product design are analyzed from the viewpoint of cognition science. Finally, the cognitive differences between the experienced designers and the novices in the process of fuel injection bump design is compared and elaborated in detail.

Designing for Chinese industries and the new China market has became a ‘hot‘ issue within the global and Chinese industrial design society. The characteristics of low labor costs and hard-working Chinese have had an effect on the rapid economic development within the region as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to analyze state of the art industrial development within Taiwan and Mainland China, and to evaluate the critical problems of industrial design development in both regions. Additionally to discover how Taiwan Chinese digital technology industries confront this situation with user-oriented design (UOD). This paper synthesizes six approaches to carry out an innovative product development framework of new product development procedures, with user oriented scenario predictions and experience innovation approach. These approaches not only generate original design data from a user’s point of view, but furthermore make it much easier to get consensus from product development teams and really create innovative designs through interdisciplinary collaboration to create innovative cultural enterprises.

Over the past few years, various novel approaches have been applied to the evaluation of interactive systems. Particularly, the importance of two categories of concepts has been emphasized: non-instrumental qualities and emotions. In this paper we present an application of an integrative approach to the experimental study of instrumental and non-instrumental quality perceptions as well as emotional user reactions as three central components of the user experience. A study is presented that investigates the influence of system properties and context parameters on these three components. The results show that specific system properties independently influence the perception of instrumental (i.e. usability) and non-instrumental qualities (i.e. visual aesthetics). Especially the perception of instrumental qualities was shown to have an impact on the users’ emotional reactions (subjective feelings as well as cognitive appraisals). There was also evidence suggesting that context parameters influenced emotional user reactions.

This article seeks to close the gap between software engineering and human-computer interaction by indicating interdisciplinary interfaces of SE and HCI lifecycles. We present a cross-discipline user interface design lifecycle that integrates SE and HCI under the umbrella of agile development.

Dundee University’s School of Computing is researching technology for older users, whose difficulty with technology often exclude them from its benefits. This paper discusses the problems raised in consulting potential users who feel they do not understand technology and are anxious about using it. How should the technologists and designers get over to this clientele the somewhat abstract concepts of ‘what might be developed‘ and how it might affect the users‘ quality of life? How could they keep the focus of discussion while giving the older people the confidence to be truthful? Experiments made with video and live theatre in consulting with older users, requirements gathering and evaluation of designs are described. This paper addresses: the process of scientific data being transformed into appropriate and useful ‘stories‘ to the satisfaction both of writer and researchers: the role of actors and facilitator: the impact on the ‘extreme users‘ in the audience: and the data thus gained by the researchers.

Software Engineering (SE) and Usability Engineering (UE) both provide a wide range of elaborated process models to create software solutions. Today, many companies have realized the need for usable products and understood that a systematic and structured approach to usability is as important as the process of software development itself. However, theory and practice still have problems to efficiently and smoothly incorporate UE methods into established development processes. One challenge is to identify integration points between the two disciplines SE and UE that allow a close collaboration, with acceptable additional organizational and operational effort. The approach presented in this paper identifies integration points between software engineering and usability engineering on the level of process models. The authors analyzed four different software engineering process models to determine their ability to create usable products. Therefore, the authors synthesized demands of usability engineering and performed an assessment of the models.

This paper presents an Activity Theoretical analysis and design model for Web-based experimentation, which is one of the online activities that plays a key role in the development and deployment of flexible learning paradigm. Such learning context is very complex as it requires both synchronous and asynchronous solutions to support differenttypes of interaction, which can take place not only among users but also between the user and the provided experimentation environment, and also between different software components that constitute the environment. The proposed analysis and design model help clarify many concepts needed for the analysis of a Web-based experimentation environment. It also represents an interpretation of Activity Theory in the context of Web-based experimentation.

Experts in the field of HCI have spoken at length about how to increase the strategic influence of User Experience Design (UXD) teams in industry [2] [5]. Others have talked about how to build a usability or user experience team in industry [3], and others have offered courses in managing HCI organizations [1] [7]. At the same time, other experts have spoken about the importance of making products usable and desirable for international audiences [9] and the value of “offshoring” their usability efforts [8]. Few though have discussed the value and process for an embedded UXD Group functioning as an internal consultancy to different product teams within their organizations. This paper presents both how the consultancy model can increase the strategic effectiveness of UXD inside a company, and how, by leveraging partners internationally, such groups can broaden the usefulness, usability, and desirability of their products to a more global audience.

In this paper we have examined the effects of scenarios from a participatory design and cross-cultural perspective. The Scenario Exchange Project was an international workshop using scenarios. The participants were university students from Japan and Taiwan. The impetus behind this project was the practical demand for designers to correctly understand different cultures and design products and services. We confirmed that scenarios are effective techniques for bolstering participatory design. Furthermore, we have recognized that we must create new methods for describing the lifestyle and cultural background of personas.

The use of Wizard of Oz (WOz) techniques for the acquisition of multimodal interaction patterns is common, but often relies on highly or fully simulated functionality. This paper suggests that a more operational WOz can benefit multimodal interaction research. The use of a hybrid system containing both fully-functional components and WOz-enabled components is an effective approach, especially for highly multi-modal systems, and collaterally, for cognitively loaded applications. The description of the requirements and resulting WOz set-up created for a user study in a traffic incident management application design is presented. We also discuss the impact of the ratio of simulated and operational parts of the system dictated by these requirements, in particular those related to multimodal interaction analysis.

Rapid Application Development (RAD) has captured interest as a solution to problems associated with traditional systems development. Describing the adoption of agile methods and Extreme Programming by a software start-up we find that all XP principles were not adopted equally and were subject to temporal conditions. Small releases, on site customer, continuous integration and refactoring were most vigorously advanced by management and adopted by developers. Paired programming on the other hand was culturally avoided.

In the design, development and use of computer-based decision support systems, the ultimate challenge and goal is to arrange and organize successful interaction between the computer and the active human being. This paper therefore examines the extent to which, by applying the hyperknowledge framework developed by Ai-Mei Chang, the holistic concept of man developed by Lauri Rauhala, and the Circles of Mind metaphor developed by Hannu Vanharanta for decision support systems, these systems can be made to emulate human cognitive processes. The approach is a new one, and it represents an emerging paradigm for achieving emulation and synergy between human decision-making processes and computer configurations.

This paper describes the development and piloting of a user-centered design method which enables participants to actively engage in a creative process to produce intuitive representations and inspire early design concepts for innovative mobile and ubiquitous applications. The research has been produced as part of the EC funded project PASION, aiming to enhance mediated communication in games and collaborative environments through the introduction of socio-emotional information cues, represented in meaningful yet abstract enough ways to accommodate variable thresholds of privacy. We describe our design research methodology, which combines analytical approaches, aiming to uncover participant’s needs, desires and perceptions with creative, generative methods, with which participants inform and inspire the design process.

The narration board is a powerful design tool to help translate user observation studies into a storytelling format. It helps to communicate design values and ideas among the design team via visualising user scenarios in its proper context during the early design stages. This paper aims to discuss the narration board as a design tool to help the design team conceptualise and visualise user scenarios interacting with future design concepts within its context of use. Second part of the paper discusses how narration boards assist in generating ideations and visualising final design concepts by interface designers. Twenty (20) design projects (N=20) were examined to study and quantify two important factors, i.e. the components of the narration board in relation with the attributes of the final design concepts. A non-parametric correlation test was used to study the correlation coefficient between scores of the two factors. The results show that there is a statistically significant positive correlation between components of the narration board and attributes of the final design concept. Those with higher scores of components in narration board tend to produce better final design concepts, and vice versa.

We introduce the user scenario-based installability design approach. The basic idea is to check out how users complete the installation and thus to understand the experience, skills, and operation habits of users through onsite survey. Special attention is paid to the installation time that affects the efficiency, problems encountered during the installation process, and how users solve these installation problems. The main issues need to be considered: How to Select Typical Users, How to Conduct Installability Task Analysis, How to Define the Scenario, How to Conduct Installability User Test.

The aim of this paper is to describe a case of washing machine panel design. In this case card sorting and cluster analysis were applied to get target users’ mental models of the information architectures about the washing machine panels, the differences among information architectures of existing panels were also quantitatively evaluated. Besides, the differences between users’ mental models and existing washing machines regarding the information architectures were identified. The methodology and results in this paper contribute to the design of washing machine panels.

The purpose of this study is to develop an approach to artifacts design based on information technology. To make interactive system easy to use, user centered design approach is utilized by many systems. For user centered design, it is important to consider total user experience. But it is not easy to consider total user experience because user experience is including many aspects. To approach total user experience, the author proposes the method of designing for user experience that consist of “User viewpoint”, “Environment viewpoint” and “Lifecycle viewpoint”. “User viewpoint” is including several user groups from universal design viewpoint, several user characters and several user emotions. “Environment viewpoint” is including hardware product, software, application, space, people who is communicating. “Lifecycle viewpoint” is including pre sales, after sales, support, upgrade, setup product and application.

To help this design approach, user experience design tool named “UED (User Experience Design) Studio” was proposed. Based on proposed three approaches, design tools were developed such as “The definition tool”, “The evaluation tool” and “The visualization tool” for user experience design. To define user experience situation easily, “The definition tool” helps designer such selecting user group, selecting environment and input user tasks based on life cycle state. “The evaluation tool” is to evaluate defined user experience easily. And “The visualization tool” is to show the result of evaluation by 3 D graphics easy to understand complicated information.

To evaluate proposed tools, experiment to make prototype was conducted and the results indicate that the proposed approach has possibility to help designer and multi-disciplinary team to consider user experience for user centered design.

The success of e-commerce depends on strong infrastructure, powerful business processes, error-free codes in e-commerce site, and highly usable interfaces. However, the most important factor to achieve these goals is the quality of design process. The main objective of axiomatic design is to provide a scientific base for design process. Axioms are the propositions which are accepted as true. The design axioms are determined by the definition of common elements of good designs. There are four sets to systemize this interaction; customer, functional, physical and process definition sets. Customer Definition Set shows the expectations of the customer in manner of product, process, system or/and material. The customer needs are expressed as functional requirements and constraints in Functional Definition Set. The physical design parameters to correspond the functional requirements are defined in Physical Definition Set. And finally, the process characterized in manner of process variables is in Process Definition Set.

The UI designer must be able to anticipate cognitive difficulties of users in the UI design process. However, the designer is likely to make erroneous judgments in the context of increasing functionality. Furthermore, time constraints in the development process exacerbate the design problem. There are various techniques to support the UI designer in the design process, including abstract design principles, specific design guidelines, design cases, design inspections, and design metrics. Metrics can summarize the status of a UI design solution more objectively and more accurately than human designers. This paper aims to develop quantitative metrics based on a unified framework for interaction design, which decomposes UI design problem into the four components: information architecture, task procedure, system dynamics, and physical interface. Three metrics were proposed to assist designer’s decision-making, including incongruity, complexity, and inefficiency. A case study shows that the proposed metrics can support the designer’s decision making in an efficient manner.

This paper proposes a simple framework for implementing SBD. This framework consists of four elements: a basic story structure, an innovation acceleration field, a tool for expressing idea/describing scenario, and an activity theory-based tension detector/idea stimulator, and a process based on the Chinese traditional literature four-stage creation process. A case study is presented at the end of the paper to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework.

Designing transparent interaction is important for ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). A psychology framework that characterizes user’s cognitive behavior in ubicomp environments would be invaluable for guiding the interaction design to be optimally compatible with human capabilities and limitations. By analyzing the cognitive skill and attention selectivity, such a framework is proposed in this paper. Correspondingly, a context-sensitive multimodal architecture is presented on the level of technology. A case study, where the theory was implemented in a handheld hypermedia guide and deployed into the context of authentic use, is then discussed.

This study sought to test the often-taken-granted assumption about the causal relationship between the aesthetic quality of products and user affect by using affective priming paradigm. The results showed that when beautiful web-pages were used as primes, the discrepancy between the response latencies to positive target and negative targets was larger than when the primes were ugly-webpage. A parallel pattern was obtained when pleasant pictures and unpleasant pictures were used as primes. Such findings supported the hypothesis that visual Gestalt of products can lead to affective change independent of reflective beauty judgment. The possibility of employing affective priming procedure to measure product beauty is also discussed in the light of the experiment results.

Since the 1980s User-Centered Design (UCD) has been becoming popular in the ICT industry. It helps seek usable designs through a set of workflows, evaluation methods, and design approaches, which construct a comprehensive UCD framework. Along with its extensive utilizations, its pitfalls are also exposed in cost-benefit, robustness, and optimization respects. However, applying the Taguchi Method can remedy these pitfalls to gain robust optimal designs. This approach is feasible but less emphasized in the Human-Computer Interaction field. From a theoretical perspective, this paper depicts a practical approach to enhance UCD framework by adopting the Taguchi philosophy. Based on the analysis of the UCD framework and the Taguchi Method, it discusses key adaptation points for the Taguchi philosophy adoption in the UCD framework. As a result, the Taguchi-Compliant User-Centered Design (TC-UCD) framework is proposed in this paper.

This paper describes an approach to integrate UCD activities into the existing Software Engineering practices and processes. The aim is to use the outcomes of UCD activities throughout the development process and to ensure that they can be utilized, traced and tested by subsequent development groups. Through this, UCD activities do become planable and manageable just like any other development activity. The authors introduce a framework of three different usability-related requirement types that reflect the results of the UCD activities performed during the software development. Each requirement type is extracted from the UCD results generated in the first three phases of the DIN EN ISO 13407 model.

An identified key reason for degraded usability in software systems is the deficiencies of current RE practice to incorporate usability perspectives effectively into SRS. The explicit expression of user and usability aspects in SRS benefits designers, developers, and testers in ensuring optimal usability in software products. This paper presents the results of a design-science oriented user interface design study to validate the proposition that incorporating user modelling and usability modelling in SRS improves design.

This paper presents two case studies of prototype evaluation as a tool for user needs elicitation for emerging technologies. In the first user evaluation, a high-fidelity virtual reality prototype is used. In the second one, a low-fidelity mixed reality prototype is used. Our results show that prototypes may be a powerful a tool for eliciting user-needs, but their potentiality depends on their fidelity. In our studies, users elicit more needs when working with the high-fidelity prototypes. Furthermore, the information collected in this case is richer and more useful for design. We discuss these results as well as some factors that could help stakeholders elicit a greater number of needs for emerging technologies.

There are many people who have the belief that the washing machine, for example, should equip with the minimum functions and there is no affection to such a machine. But today, some users have the affection and/or the positive adherence to such washing machine as to equip the slanted drum and anti-bacteria function.

As digital technology flourished, modes of interaction pertaining to computer systems started to be utilized in consumer products. As a consequence, problems peculiar to software began to be observed in once simple-to-operate products. In order to overcome these problems, one of the most versatile tools utilized during design and evaluation stages in software development, that is usability testing, was introduced to the domain of consumer products. However, both literature findings and author’s personal experiences show that there are some problems with sampling issues, since participants’ prior experiences with digital interfaces seem to affect test results more in the case of consumer products. In this study, after a theoretical discussion, the measurement tool being developed to control general interaction expertise (GIE) was presented. In the preliminary studies of predictive validity, correlation coefficients up to 0.76 were detected between test scores and usability performance.

A previous paper compared the 110 guidelines in ISO CD 9241-151 with the 187 guidelines produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and found that 76% of the HHS guidelines and 54% of the ISO guidelines were unique. New versions of both the original 2004 documents were issued in 2006, but 71% of the HHS guidelines and 46% of the ISO guidelines are still unique. Neither set of guidelines is easy to use for an expert review of whether a web site complies with the guidelines. A more comprehensive checklist has been developed, based on the HHS and ISO guidelines, but extended to include additional research-based guidelines on privacy and security and e-commerce. It is complemented by a handbook describing each guideline in more detail, illustrated with an example, and with an explanation of how it should be tested and when compliance can be stated.

Consistency, as one of the most important features of usability, has been using as an important indicator of accessing usability. A number of studies recently have focused on how to create consistency in a single application, but few of them have noted how to create and evaluate the consistency across products in a same company. In this paper, we addressed the problem by using two methods, in-complete matching task and the methods of paired comparison, to analyze the distinction among the competitive products and evaluate the consistency of the current products. The study finds that these two methods can relative rapidly identify the performances of consistency between different products and be able to find out some design elements impacting the consistency. However, as the object of the study in this experiment is only involved in the login interface, the applicability of the method needs further studies.

This paper reports the findings of an evaluation of an adaptive multimodal application for reading of rich digital talking books. Results are in accordance with previous studies, indicating no user perceived difference between applications with and without adaptivity. The NASA Task Load Index was also used and showed that users of the adaptive application reported less workload. Results also include a comparison between tasks executed with electronic support and tasks executed with print support, and also what specific features in the interface benefited the most from the use of visual and audio modalities.

In this paper, we propose a method that detects inconsistencies between user interaction logs of a task and desired sequences for the task based on mouse click coordinate logs. The proposed method models two successive clicks as a vector and thus a sequence of operation in a user/desired log as a sequence of vectors. A vector is from the

i

th clicked point to the (

i+1

)th clicked point in the screen. To detect inconsistencies in user interactions and desired sequences, each vector from user logs is compared with each vector from desired logs. As cues of usability problems, the method detects two types of inconsistencies: unnecessary/missed operations. We have developed a computer tool for logging and analyzing user interactions and desired sequences by the proposed method. The tool is applied to experimental usability evaluation of ten business/public organization websites. Effectiveness of the method is evaluated based on the application result. The proposed method contributes to find 61% of the usability problems found by a manual method in much smaller amount of time: the number of clicks analyzed by an evaluator with the proposed method is only 1/5-1/10 of that with the manual method. This result indicates the proposed method is efficient in finding problems.

The User-centered design (UCD) game is a tool for human-computer interaction practitioners to demonstrate the key user-centered design methods and how they interrelate in the design process in an interactive and participatory manner. The target audiences are departments and institutions unfamiliar with UCD but whose work is related to the definition, creation, and update of a product or service.

This paper presents a tool that supports a scenario based expert evaluation method called DEPTH (usability evaluation method based on DEsign PaTterns & Heuristics criteria). DEPTH is a method for performing scenario-based heuristic usability evaluation of e-systems. DEPTH focuses on the functionality of e-systems and emphasizes on usability characteristics within their context. This can be done not only by examining not only the availability of a functionality within an e-system but also the usability performance of the supported functionality according to a specific context of use. The main underlying ideas of DEPTH are: i) to minimize the preparatory phase of a usability evaluation process and ii) to assist a novice usability expert (one who is not necessarily familiar with the genre of the e-system). Thus, we (re)use expert’s knowledge captured in design patterns and structured as design pattern languages for the various genres of e-systems. This paper briefly describes the DEPTH method and presents the way a specially designed tool supports it along with the findings from an evaluation study.

User Interfaces has an important role on the success of an application. Due the relevant temporal and economic cost of its development is necessary to obtain a high acceptability and effective design. To consider a user interface acceptable this must be kind to user, do its objectives and be easy for the user. In this paper an abstract model specification is presented to allow evaluate the acceptability of user interfaces. This is made in a semiautomatic way validating the three items defined before. We also present a notation for the user interface testing and a tool that allows the user executes user tasks over the graphic user interface prototyping generates by the tool.

Human fatigue is a key problem existing in interactive genetic algorithms which limits population size and generations. Aiming at this problem, evaluation strategies based on surrogate models are presented, in which some individuals are evaluated by models instead of human. Most of strategies adopt fixed substitution proportion, which can not alleviate human fatigue farthest. A novel evaluation strategy with variable substitution proportion is proposed. Substitution proportion lies on models’ precision and human fatigue. Different proportion cause three evaluation phases, which are evaluated by human only, mixed evaluated by human and the model, evaluated by the model only. In third phase, population size is enlarged. Taking fashion evolutionary design system as an example, the validity of the strategy is proved. Simulation results indicate the strategy can effectively alleviate human fatigue and improve the speed of convergence.

User-Centeredness is the popular approach for achieving users’ satisfaction. Nevertheless, when considering profit optimization under economy efficiency and the limit of development period, it is almost impossible to apply solutions to all the usability problems reported during the test. Therefore, the strategic approach is required to maximize the perceived usability under the limited circumstance. Physical User Interaction (PUI) is defined as the physical side view of the usability and the broader concept of the usability. In this research, we constructed UI guidelines for PUI (Physical Usability Interaction) of mobile phone reflecting the user’s value. This research applied the Kano’s model of customers’ satisfaction to classify the PUI guidelines into two groups. One is the design standards which must be satisfied to guarantee the minimum satisfaction. The other is the value-adding criteria to hold a dominant position compared to competitive product. From this categorization, we could use the PUI design guidelines not only for evaluating current product quality, but also for finding the direction of strategic value improvement.

Increasingly there are more and more advantageous technical facilities and automated systems visible in business conference rooms. One of most advantageous media from the central system to users is the wireless facility controller and it is expected to bring individuals more convenience and efficiency by assisting them to control many kinds of media. This paper discusses ‘usability analysis‘ with a ‘scenario-based‘ approach on ‘user-oriented‘ design concepts early on in the product design process through a practical case study concerning the controller. This study suggests a practical approach of scenario and usability analysis through a simple, structured framework. The framework is outlined by three major components: the design strategy from analyzing competitors’ products with scenario-based approach consisting of user, product, applications and field of use as context variables, usability analysis with product interaction and user’ observations with existing problems.

Since many empirical results have been accumulated in usability evaluation research, it would be very useful to provide usability practitioners with generalized guidelines by analyzing the combined results. This study aims at estimating individual detection rate for user-based testing and heuristic evaluation through meta-analysis, and finding significant factors, which affect individual detection rates. Based on the results of 18 user-based testing and heuristic evaluation experiments, individual detection rates in user-based testing and heuristic evaluation were estimated as 0.36 and 0.14, respectively. Expertise and task type were found as significant factors to improve individual detection rate in heuristic evaluation.

The think-aloud protocol, also known as concurrent verbalisation protocol, is widely used in the field of HCI today, but as the technology and applications have evolved the protocol has had to cope with this. Therefore new variations of the protocol have seen the light of day. One example is retrospective verbalisation. To compare concurrent and retrospective verbalisation an experiment was conducted. A home healthcare application was evaluated with 15 participants using both protocols. The results of the experiment show that the two protocols have each their strengths and weaknesses, and as such are very equally good although very different.

These days, the main focus in developing telematics systems is to promote safety by decreasing the workload of the driver. To achieve this goal, simplification of the interface as well as the resolution of GUI interaction problems must be worked on. For this research, objective and quantitative assessments are provided in the early steps of building the haptic interface model. The purpose of this research is to create an evaluation model that uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to fulfill user requirements. This research developed an AHP evaluation model that can present recommendations, as well as the degree of importance, for haptic interface design with quantitative assessments of the prototype by finding out the absolute and relative importance for evaluation groups and factors in early design levels using AHP.

A large numbers of user interface guidelines and patterns have developed by different researchers. These patterns and guidelines are, however, either too generic or too specific to use. In addition, a multitude of guides cause problems to find and use them effectively. Because of these problems, using different guides are not enough useful e.g. for software designers. This paper describes experiences and findings of a case study project. As a result of an iterative development process, the tailored user interface guideline is presented. Other result was that the guideline was well received by the software designers.

High-level quantitative usability requirements were determined for a public health care system. The requirements determination process was iterative, and the requirements were refined step-by-step. The usability requirements are categorized first through the main user groups, then by the services, and finally by specific usability factors.

A diversity of usability problems with office thermostats were found in a preceding study. In this paper, the reasons behind the problems are studied by analysing a room thermostat. The analysis shows that a substantial amount of information is needed to use a simple thermostat, and the system image of the thermostat does not deliver the information. From the viewpoint of the analysis, it is not surprising that office occupants have serious problems with thermostats.

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) have become commonplace addition to the normal environments surrounding us. Based on IEEE 802.11 technology, WLANs can now be found in the working place, at homes, and in many cities’ central district area as open or commercial services. These access points in the public areas are called “hotspots”. They provide Internet access in various types of public places such as shopping districts, cafés, airports, and shops. As the hotspots are being used by a growing user base that is also quite heterogeneous, their usability is becoming evermore important. As hotspots can be accessed by a number of devices differing in their capabilities, size, and user interfaces, achieving good usability in accessing the services is not straightforward. This paper reports a user study and usability analysis on WLAN access to discover user’s needs and suggest enhancements to fight the usability problems in WLAN access.

A new framework for measuring the business values of software is presented. The business values of software are categorized to two groups: tangible- and intangible-benefit. An implicit approach is used to quantitatively measure the intangible benefit of software by introducing two concepts, product attribute and quality attribute. The approach can relate the quantitative value from the usability test into the qualitative, intangible benefits of software. As an example, the proposed framework is applied to a software system in the development stage. We demonstrate the capability of the framework to quantitatively measure the intangible benefits of software as well as the tangible benefit by studying the usability test.

The paper proposes an approach to comparative usability evaluation that incorporates important relevant criteria identified in previous work. It applies the proposed approach to a case study of a comparative evaluation of an academic website employing four widely-used usability evaluation methods (UEMs): heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthroughs, think-aloud protocol and co-discovery learning.

Based on the historical review, a new model on the concept structure of usability and satisfaction was proposed. As a proposer of user engineering, the author redefined the concept of usability of which the usability engineering is responsible and linked the concept of satisfaction to the user engineering. It is based on the differentiation of the objective characteristics of artefact and the subjective impression of user.

A traditional definition of usability cites the successful attainment of some related control within a specified period of time and a minimum number of errors. Therefore, most of attempts focused on the function of the product. At present, user centered design is highly emphasized; in addition, more entertainment-oriented products has received high attention by consumer. So, whether or not the product can meet the emotion needs of the consumer is significant for the brand. This paper provides the definition of emotional usability based on the traditional usability research and introduce one of the most famous home appliance company Haier how to use it during the course of product development through case study and provides the process to apply emotional usability to make the product serves a need beyond the traditional functional objective to satisfy the emotion needs of the user in order to improve the product differentiator.

The functional description of EWEB, a tool for automatic empirical evaluation of web navigation, is presented in this document. EWEB supports naïve evaluators for designing experiments which contain experiment type (within-subject, factorial, etc.), web logs to be captured (time, visited pages, etc.), task models (search task, free navigation) and surveys (questionnaires, card sorting) to be performed by experimental participants. EWEB stores navigational data preserving the experiment structure and supports data analysis and interpretation, with the possibility of generating usability metrics. Requiring minimal installation on client computer, EWEB can be used for both lab evaluation and remote evaluation in multiple browsers. One empirical web study, designed and performed by means of EWEB, is described in order to illustrate its validity as a research tool.

We describe the results of an empirical study comparing an interactive Information Visualization (InfoVis) technique called Gravi++ (GRAVI), Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) and Machine Learning (ML). The application domain is the psychotherapeutic treatment of anorectic young women. The three techniques are supposed to support the therapists in finding the variables which influence success or failure in therapy.

To evaluate the utility of the three techniques we developed on the one hand a report system which helped subjects to formulate and document in a self-directed manner the insights they gained when using the three techniques. On the other hand, focus groups were held with the subjects. The combination of these very different evaluation methods prevents jumping to false conclusions and enables for an comprehensive assessment of the tested techniques.

The combined results indicate that the three techniques (EDA, ML, and GRAVI) are complementary and therefore should be used in conjunction.

This paper presents an ethnographic method for assessing user needs in designing for rural settings. “Serial Hanging Out” consists of short-term participant observation with multiple, independent informants. The method is characterized by: (1) its short-term nature, (2) the use of participant observation supported by specific field techniques, and (3) the emphasis on user needs for design. It is discussed in relation to similar methodological work in associated fields. To ground the discussion, the method is presented in the context of ongoing work to develop improved information systems to support rural health workers in Mongolia.

Content preparation is essential for web design [25]. The objective of this paper is to establish a theoretical foundation for the development of methods to evaluate the effectiveness of content preparation in information technology operations. Past studies identify information as the dominant concern of users, and delivery mechanism as a secondary concern [20]. The best presentation of the wrong information results in a design with major usability problems and does not aid the user in accomplishing his task. This paper shifts the focus of existing usability evaluation methods. It attempts to fill the void in usability literaoture by addressing the information aspect of usability evaluation. Combining the strengths of content preparation and usability evaluation yields major implications for a broad range of IT uses.

Early evaluation of interactive systems is currently the subject of numerous researches. Some of them aim at explicitly coupling design and evaluation by various software mechanisms. We describe in this paper two approaches of early evaluation exploiting new technologies and paradigms. The first approach is based on aspect oriented programming; the second one proposes an explicit coupling between agent-oriented architecture and evaluation agents. These two approaches are globally compared in this paper.

Usability is a key issue when developing software, but how to integrate usability work and software development continues to be a problem, which the stakeholders must face. This study aims at developing a more coherent and realistic understanding of the problem based on 14 interviews in three case studies. The results indicate that usability during software development has to be considered with both a user interface focus and an organizational focus. Especially techniques to support the uncovering of organizational usability are lacking in both human computer interaction and software engineering. Further, the continued engagement of stakeholders, who carry the vision about the purpose of change, stands out as a critical factor for the realization of project goals.

We analyze and discuss human performance model for PBUI (Push-Based User Interface) in this paper. PBUI is a user interface method in which a user performs a desired task by selecting a target object that usually represents the task itself. The candidate objects are sequentially and automatically presented to the user by the system. When a target object is presented, user selects the target object by a simple action such as just pushing a button. In this paper, we propose human performance model of PBUI and discuss the characteristics of PBUI. We also evaluate performance of PBUI by comparing with GUI.

Handset is transforming from a traditional cellular phone to an integrated content delivery platform for communications, entertainment and commerce. Their increasing capabilities and value-added features provide more utilities, and at the same time, make the design more complicated and the device more difficult to use. An online survey was conducted to measure user’s perspective of the usability level of their current handset using a psychometric type of instrument. A total of 9 usability factors were derived from the results of exploratory factor analysis. The total percentage variance explained by these 9 factors of the overall variance of the data was 65.20%. The average internal consistency in this study is 0.70.

This paper proposes tips for designing Web pages appropriate for the elderly. The characteristics of mobile phone Web pages and the effects of aging are elucidated. The elderly had difficulty in reading texts, finding the focus, operating pages and input, and understanding the contents in some cases. Tips for designing Web pages that are appropriate for the elderly are proposed based on our observations.

Many organizations have scrambled to get control measures and discipline systems in place to deter employees from engaging in NWRC. Since control measures and discipline systems are insufficient to curb NWRC at the workplace, we propose to integrate the control perspective with task characteristics and organization culture. Thus, we examine the following research questions: How would the amount of NWRC control mechanisms affect employees’ NWRC behavior under different task characteristics? Does a match between the disciplinary approach and organization culture lead to more effective NWRC management? Two separate studies on full-time employees in various organizations revealed three important findings. Firstly, the ineffectiveness of NWRC control mechanisms occurred under high degree of task non-routineness. Secondly, the fit between discipline systems and organization culture leads to higher employee satisfaction with NWRC management, which subsequently led to lower time spent on NWRC. Thirdly, there is no best NWRC discipline system for each organization.

Despite rapid growth in the number of websites, there is still a significant number of ergonomic problems, which hinder cognitive activities of web users. As cognitive aging is generally associated with a decrease of working memory capacities, an inhibition failure and a slowing of the speed of processing, we argue that aging may have negative effects on information search activities, especially when the website incorporates ergonomic problems. In the present experimental study, we compare younger and older web users performances while searching for information in two websites: one that fits the ergonomic recommendations and another with ergonomic problems. The results show that aging had negative consequences on users’ activities of information search (more times to find information, more number of steps required to find information and more cognitive resources involved in the activity). These consequences are more important for the non-ergonomic web site than for the ergonomic site.

Ontology is built to establish a classification and conceptualization in knowledge disciplines. With the support of ontology technologies, users can retrieve information in a semantic manner. A primary course of ontology building is concepts development. Typical concept constructing approaches are usually consulting experts or analyzing documents. However, ontology-based systems usually do not allowed user involvement during developing ontology. To acquire expertise from users, this study utilizes Kansei Engineering to translate human emotions such as perception, feeling, or impression of things into the design elements of ontology concepts. The new design ontology then depends upon user-centric conceptual structure. This study particularly interests in archiving photos by employing ontology with user involvement. Empirical lessons show user involvement can reduce the gap in defining concepts between experts and users.

The present paper focuses on the influence of avatar creation in a video game. More specifically, this study investigates the effects of avatar creation on attitude towards avatar, empathy, presence, and para-social interaction of female non-game users. As a cyber-self, an avatar is a graphic character representing a user in cyberspace. Avatars are primarily used in the entertainment industry as high-tech novelties, controlled by game users, for high-end video games. Some games provide game characters by default that users cannot change, but other games provide various options gamers can choose. What if game users can create their own avatars? Do they have more psychological closeness with their avatars as their cyber-selves? This study tested the differences of attitude, empathy, presence, and para-social interaction of female non-game users between an avatar creation group and a non-avatar creation group and resulted in no difference.

Much of the world’s knowledge is captured in writing, and shared through writing, and as such is inaccessible to the one eighth of the world’s population who are illiterate. We are developing a software system for the use of this population based on speech and images without written text. We have evaluated basic interaction devices and simple interface metaphors to arrive at the design of an overall interface that is attractive to and usable by illiterate people. We report our usability experiments, and describe our system.

In the past, computer virus writers developed malicious code to become famous. This trend has been steadily changing and we now see a new breed of malicious code that is written with a motivation of financial gain. Computer users are vulnerable to such attacks and security has become one of the domains that affect every computer user. Users often find themselves performing a balancing act between securing their systems and enjoying the “easy life”. Humans are highly task oriented and they tend to discount security if it gets in their way. Some users are unaware of the risks posed by computer viruses/spyware and unprotected networks, while several informed users compromise their security for convenience. With the growing digital infrastructure, the necessity of networking various devices is even more pronounced thereby adding up to the complexities of protecting it. Few users understand the difference between securing their network and protecting their system from viruses and spyware, and the varying degree of security awareness among users translates into inadequate protection for some networks. This paper reports findings from a user research describing the deficiencies and flaws in today’s security software, outlines the user behavior to understand their perspective on computer and network security and describes why security is sometimes compromised for convenience. A “virtual gateway” security service model is also proposed to make security transparent to the users by providing protection at the Internet service provider level.

Information systems (IS) usage is predominant in organizations. The effectiveness and strategic potential of IS, however, depend upon the individuals within the organization who use or rely on IS, both directly and indirectly, to perform their job functions. Individuals differ in their abilities to use IS effectively to maximize task performance. Some individuals far exceed their peer group and can realize greater performance levels than others. This research proposes to understand the attributes of these individuals using the Repertory Grid Technique. This technique will identify attributes of these individuals identified as highly competent IS users, defined as those individuals who are able to utilize IS to its fullest potential and obtain the greatest performance. The attributes identified may generate factors that can then be fostered in other IS users to improve performance.

Two digital tourist guides have been developed and tested in real settings. They are both outdoor guides adapted to mobile phones, - targeting attractions and tourist services within a region and a specific attraction respectively. Aspects related to simplicity in use, installation procedures, content quality, co-visiting mechanisms, and mechanisms that support links between physical object and digital content should be accentuated in future digital guides.

In order to support elderly people to remain activate in communicating with their families and friends, we are developing always-on communications systems that are based on the exchange of indirect information, the videophone, and touch panel displays. Two field experiments were conducted with elderly people in Japan. One of the experiments was conducted between families members, while the other was performed between elderly people and social workers. The results show that IT can support the enjoyment of elderly life.

This research looks at various navigation menu designs and the use of the summary of important content with the aim to improve older web users’ performance and satisfaction and to alleviate their disorientation and task workload. Fifty older participants with abundant computer experience were recruited from senior-citizen universities so as to exclude the influence of lack of experience from the result. During the experiment, participants searched for specific product information on e-commerce websites with different navigation menus and different design of the summary of important content. Participants using tab menu were found less disoriented than people using index menu. Providing a summary of important information could reduce the workload the tasks imposed on older user effectively.

This study addresses the Out-Of-Box Experience (OOBE) usability issues of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) considering outcomes of distributed development process and high number of available product choices. A methodology is presented, usability experiments are conducted and results are discussed. The objective was to determine key factors that affect usability of F/OSS during OOBE and first hours of use. We concluded that OOBE of F/OSS was significant in software usability perception and possible adoption. User experience, visible structure, consistency and functionality of the interface had significant impact on OOBE and first hours of use. Neither online support, nor product box appearance appeared as important.

To enhance the quality of e-business web sites, a study of factor structure in content preparation is needed. Based on background literature, a content preparation survey of 70 items was developed and completed by 428 white collar employees of XOCECO Company in mainland China. The survey aimed at examining the significant content factors of e-business web sites. Results of the study indicated a 0.75 internal consistency of the questionnaire. A factor analysis of the data indicated fifteen main content factors for e-business web sites, which accounts for 60.1% percent of total variance. The factors in order of importance are: security content, quality content, service content, appearance description, contact information, aid function, customized function, search function, product specification, purchasing aid, price content, detailed description, comment content, matching product, review content. This study concludes with guidelines for the design of content preparation of e-business we presented.

This paper describes a case study, in which PayPal China improved the user experience by streamlining its checkout experience. This project applied User-Centered Design methodologies and involved cross-functional and international collaborations within the company. The outcome of the project drastically improved user satisfaction.

Research has identified many different concepts and factors, e.g. immersiveness, presence, performance, interaction, and defined a large number of guidelines that contribute to developing advanced virtual environments (VEs). By reviewing research on differences between individual work and group work, and how it is influenced by these factors, this paper aims to improve understanding of networked collaboration. Allowing creativity is considered to promote higher quality of work in general. The paper examines the impact of creativity on work in VEs, with focus on understanding the relationship between presence and creativity in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). It is found that important prerequisites for successful outcomes are balance between presence and copresence and providing enough time and space for individual contributions.

This paper proposes a preliminary user taxonomy that describes differences among users when interacting with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems. A qualitative study based on expert-ratings was conducted to get a prioritized list of person variables influencing the interaction behavior. Based on this list, eight preliminary user types with different attitudes towards ICT-systems were identified and described. This taxonomy will be tested and validated by empirical investigations.

Responding to computer-initiated notifications requires a shift in attention that disrupts the flow of work. The degree of cost associated with resuming the original task following interruption may be dependent upon such factors as the transition between tasks (was the worker able to consolidate his/her place in the main task before engaging in the interruption?) as well as the nature of the interrupting task itself (e.g., length or complexity). The current paper reviews a number of studies from our laboratory that investigate the effects of brief interruptions to the execution phase of computer-based 5-disk Tower of London problems. The results are interpreted within the theoretical framework of the goal-activation model [1] and suggestions are made for practical applications that may help to minimize the disruption caused.

Home is where human living in, and can be relaxed and entertained. Scenario control is a man-machine system integrate audio/video equipment, light, curtain, air conditioner by using wireless LAN technology, defines common using scenarios, makes user interactive with product, handle all equipment quickly, enjoy smart home lifestyle. This research using the method of practice design, verifies how user-oriented design (UOD) and scenario semantics analysis help designer attain product innovation design.

This study investigated the effect of time orientation on notification systems. A special game was designed to test users’ performance and perception with notification systems. Significant differences of Interruption and Reaction level were found between monochronic and polychronic participants. The results showed that time orientation do affect users’ perception and performance with notification systems. Polychronic users perceive lower level of interruption of the notification messages than monochronic users; polychronic users prefer rapid and accurate response to the stimuli provided by the notification system while monochronic users tend to avoid that.

The concept of presence, or “being there,” has become a central issue for many researchers who study human-computer interaction. Although several dimensions of presence have been discussed in the literature, here we focus specifically on social presence as the feeling of “being together” in mediated communication environment by relating it to the three concepts: co-presence, mutual awareness and connectedness. We propose that this conceptualization is applicable to use in studying social interaction through various types of CMC technologies.

This study aimed to reveal age-related interaction characteristics through user observations. The interaction behaviors of comparatively younger adults (20s) and older adults (40s~50s) were examined while they used an MP3 player, and age-related differences regarding performance, operation methods, and workload aspect were analyzed. The results reveal that the higher error frequency, poorer ability in terms of physical operation, and the lower subjective performance of the older adults are due to an age effect while higher workload aspects are due to a lack of background knowledge.

In a community such as conferences, numerous service providers and service users exist, and people interact using contexts. With the improvements in context-awareness computing and mobile computing technologies, human–computer interactions for exchanging contexts started increasing. In this paper, we introduce some interaction techniques such as tag interaction and service discovery interaction using a mobile device to provide an efficient user interface to exchange contexts in a conference room. We identified typical situations in which these interactions can be used in a paper, poster session, and for providing individual information among the attendees. We analyzed the two interaction techniques to be suitable to improve the interactions for exchanging contexts in a conference.

A recent trend in cognitive modeling is to couple cognitive architectures with computer models or simulations of dynamic environments, such as flight simulators, to study interactive behavior and embedded cognition. Progress in this area is made difficult by the fact that cognitive architectures traditionally have been motivated by data from discrete experimental trials using static, non-interactive tasks. As a result, additional theoretical problems must be addressed to bring cognitive architectures to bear on the study of cognition in dynamic and interactive environments. I identify and discuss three such problems dealing with the need to model the sensitivity of behavior to environmental constraints, the need to model context-specific adaptations underlying expertise, and the need for environmental modeling at a functional level. These issues do not arise merely out of the needs of “applied” science, but instead signal gaps in the fundamental scientific understanding of cognition and behavior in dynamic, interactive contexts.

This paper presents the results of an empirical study on some aspects of user-centered design of products for the global market. In the context of the case study “navigation system” Chinese and German users were each confronted with an experimental prototype being structured either according to German users’ mental models of a navigation system or to Chinese users’ mental models. Performance in operating the systems and perceived system attractiveness were measured. Results suggest that the Chinese user group’s performance and the German user group’s perceived attractiveness of the navigation system was negatively affected if the system was based on the other group’s mental model.

The role of interface design is to enable communication between people and the technical product such as a cellular phone, computer, or PDA. To use the product successfully, the interface design should be easy to use. The objective of this paper is to create a practical and user-friendly interface design for a wireless device to control home appliances. In order to control home appliances with a cellular phone, the author suggests a natural (intuitive) interface design that is friendly and attractive to users, based on their experience, and effectively uses graphic elements such as layout, icon, color, and text. As part of this natural (intuitive) interface design, the author suggests using a wheel key to control a cursor system for navigating a cellular phone screen. A usability test was conducted to determine problems people have while using the prototype. The results of the usability test indicated that the user interface was successful, and participants were satisfied with the prototype.

With the prevalent use of visual interfaces and the increasing demand to display more information, information complexity becomes a major concern for designers. Complex interfaces affect the system effectiveness, efficiency, and even safety. Researchers at the Federal Aviation Administration have developed two sets of psychometric questionnaires to evaluate information complexity of air traffic control displays. This study adapted the questionnaires for commercial visual interfaces and validated them with directed and exploratory tasks on three travel websites. The results confirmed that both complexity questionnaires have satisfactory reliability, validity, and sensitivity. But questionnaire B demonstrated higher sensitivity than Questionnaire A.

This paper discusses the development of the technical methodology for remote recording to maximize environmental validity for a project on how novices develop familiarity with desktop videoconferencing (DVC). It is also a discussion of how the technical setup, as well as the resulting data, was useful for finding usability issues for the company that provided the DVC software.

The rapidly aging population of Japan is now considered a serious social problem. In fact, populations are aging worldwide, and considerable research has been done on the phenomenon. One area that has been researched is Web page design. Some common guidelines for Web content or page designs make it difficult or impossible for people with certain cognitive or visual disabilities to read moving text quickly enough. Movement can also distract these people to such an extent that the rest of the page becomes unreadable, and people with physical disabilities might not be able to move quickly or accurately enough to interact with moving objects [6]. With this in mind, experiments were conducted on 24 people in their twenties and thirties in Yokosuka-shi, Japan and on 18 elderly people in Beijing, China. The results were then compared.

This paper points out the complementarity of HCI and cognitive science in studying agents’ interactions with their environments. Embodied interaction is related to embodied and distributed cognition. A theoretical framework based on the distinction “potentiality/actuality” is outlined as an approach to the concept of “reality” in HCI and research on presence and copresence. Within this framework presence and copresence are specified in connection with an agent’s potentiality to act upon its environment, i.e. to actively explore and manipulate its environment. Methodological problems concerning theoretical and empirical research on interaction are sketched. To explore new methodological ideas New Media Art is used as a test-bed and an ongoing exploratory experiment on communicating "emotions" through robots is briefly reported.

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of subjective and objective probe questions in predicting situation awareness as measured by the Situation Awareness Rating Technique (SART). The data for this evaluation were taken from a previous investigation in which instrument- rated pilots flew automated ILS approaches into the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Airport while monitoring the status of patrol vehicles proximal to their approach path. At three points during a simulation run, pilots were administered a questionnaire containing seven questions designed to probe situation awareness. At the end of the run, SART was administered. We found that certain probe questions can predict SART scores. However, the usefulness of these probes requires that the questions be designed in conjunction with scenario development to ensure that operationally critical variables are being probed, and that sufficient variability in the responses allow assessments of relations with sufficient statistical power.

Avatars in shared virtual environments are usually described as representations of the users, but they can be much more than just an arbitrary icon ‘standing for‘ (re-presenting) somebody who is absent. In multi-user virtual reality avatars can be experienced by the users as presences or presentations of persons, as well as can be seen as re-presentations; and it is by this property that they allow for co-presence experience. This paper outlines a theory about the relation between persons and their avatars by focusing on both the experience of transmission (as opposed to simulation) and the experience of méthexis or participation (as opposed to representation).

Memory aids provide useful assistance for forgetful people. However, the inherent concern is that the convenience of memory aids can also create detrimental user dependency; thereby creating forgetful people. As a case study, I investigate how an example cooking memory aid that summarizes which ingredients have been added how many times could avoid user dependency that would otherwise atrophy the cook’s ability of short-term memory recall. How does the cook rely on the memory aid to complete the cooking task? Does the cook use the memory aid more frequently over time? From a group of three young adult participants across five cooking sessions, I report changes in their use and nonuse of the memory aid over two weeks. The findings suggest that the young adults used the memory aid to confirm their own memory recall, thereby bolstering their self-confidence. Consequently, they came to rely on the memory aid less because they learned to trust their own memory recall more, thereby building memory independence from using the memory aid.

With the concurrent rapid increasing of aging population and digital science, issues on providing appropriate information elements on computer and website have become more and more significant. This study was aimed at examining different effects of movements and transformations in flash animations on performance (time and error) and subjective perception (satisfaction, vision fatigue and workload) of older adults. Eighteen subjects coming from the University of the Third Age of Railway Ministry of China all of who were experienced computer and Internet users participated in the experiment where flash animations mode and moving speed were manipulated as independent variables. The results indicated significant differences among four different animations modes for performance (time and error) and vision fatigue. Significant differences were also found among three levels of moving speeds for performance (time and error) and vision fatigue. Further implications of flash animations design for the elderly were discussed.

Managing personal information space and working context is complicated in computerized environment. One well-known cause for the problem is that digital information is superficially fragmented into different data types and structures. Several unifying approaches have been proposed to facilitate semantic connections between them. Particularly in personal information retrieval, temporal information has turned to be useful. Hence, in this article, we present an empirical research setting for studying the utility of representing personal usage-history in information retrieval by comparing it with more traditional hierarchical representation. The research setting is based on a software Tool that is described in the article.

This paper describes two generic counseling approaches, valuable in the field of User Centred Design. The paper differentiates the areas of User Experience from User Centered Design as a holistic approach. The conclusions drawn will suggest which type of consultancy approach to best use for which type of service. With this, the authors especially address external usability consultants.

Software vendors often provide software for free download but with restrictions (e.g., time and/or functionality restrictions). The question that arises is to what extent the restrictions should be set to induce users to procure the full version. This study seeks to answer this question by looking from two perspectives: expectation-disconfirmation and coping behavior. Building on these perspectives, we present a research model of user’s coping reactions toward software restrictions. We seek to understand user reactions (i.e., derivation of coping strategy) when their expectation toward trial restrictions is negatively disconfirmed. It is further posited that situational control could moderate the relationship between expectation disconfirmation and coping responses. We believe this research will contribute to enrich the current IS field and benefit market practitioners.

People often believe that fidelity is an important principle of cartographic information representation, that is, the closer of the geo information representation to the real world the better. However, excessively high fidelity of geo information representation does not necessarily bring about effective navigation and convenient reading, as excessive information representation may bring about cognitive burden to users, thereby affecting usability of users. Based on study of the form of the traditional map representation of China, the author finds that during drawing of map by the ancient people, in view of the user’s mental model and the specific setting for use, they were good at adopting multiple forms of information representation to lessen user’s cognitive burden, increase user’s intuition for reading, and bring about effective navigation. For inspiration of geographic information design, this kind of form of user’s mental model-oriented information representation is of certain significance.

Cognitive Load, as an indicator of pressure on working memory during task performing, attracts more and more research interests in recent years. By correctly measuring cognitive load levels, the system can adjust task procedure to maintain the cognitive load in an acceptable range; therefore, the subject can execute tasks more accurately and efficiently. Among many different cognitive load measuring approaches, speech-based measurement is effective due to its non-intrusive nature and possibility of online measurement. Most existing research on speech-based cognitive load measurement is based on manually extracted features, which prevent practical use. In this paper, some potential speech features, such as rate of pauses and rate of pitch peaks are investigated and proved to be effective. All feature extraction is based on automatic algorithm.

Information and communication technology (ICT) acceptance and use is a prolific research stream in the information systems (IS) field. One major theoretical influence is the Theory of Reasoned Action/Theory of Planned Behavior (TRA/TPB). While the research stream achieved high consensus and validation in IS, the interest in attitude, an important concept in TRA/TPB, has gone through ups and downs over the past decades due to the lack of predictability of attitude for behavioral intention. In this paper, we clarify both conceptual and operational confusions by providing clear definitions of two different types of attitudes and detailing their relationships to each other and to behavioral intention. Empirical data confirms that attitude toward behaviors is a better prediction of intention than attitude toward objects (ICT); attitude toward objects has positive influence on attitude toward behaviors. Attitudes toward a previous version of the software and its use have significant impacts on the current attitudes.

The social value of Web applications is in their potential to be the conduit for many different types of applications to many different people, using different resources and embedded in diverse contexts. Designing for flexibility involves many people, with different skills, interests and levels of commitment, including, designers, developers and users. Tailorable features in the user interface demand a clear bond between the phases in the whole software lifecycle, starting from requirements elicitation to the design and development stages. As interaction patterns have been considered a promising approach to bridge the gaps between analysis, design and implementation of usability related features, this work first investigates and synthesizes from literature a set of interaction patterns related to tailoring activities. From this analysis, a semiotic-informed categorization of tailorable user interface features is presented and discussed; an elicitation pattern for tailorable user interface features illustrates the usefulness of the proposal.

Usability evaluation can be accomplished in different ways, depending on individual information interests and specific constraints. In some cases the test user and the usability evaluator are located at different places, for instance in mobile environments or in the case of Internet websites, where the user can’t be observed as in a laboratory situation. The usage of multi-modal interfaces introduces some additional constraints. To overcome the problems, techniques of remote usability testing are applied. The data recorded during the test is structured und afterwards analyzed. A user centric approach structures the data based on tasks that are intended by the user. A task model describes the tasks composed of subtasks and temporal relationships between them. This paper introduces and evaluates two tools, AWUSA and ReModEl, which use task modeling for remote usability evaluation.

Innovation design is the trend of products in the future. User-oriented design (UOD) is a design process which focuses on the needs of the user and develops product concepts for them. The objective of this research is to find the UOD patterns from four digital products cases. The cases included ‘Home Scenario Control’, ‘Wireless Conference Room Facility Controller‘, ‘Medical Tablet PC‘ and ‘Elderly Care System and Interface‘. The results evidence that we can find ‘real‘ needs and users’ ‘problems‘ concerning different digital products and that we can also integrate differing opinions from various professional fields.

User Interface (UI) systems are increasingly complex and nowadays assist critical activities. The development of UIs needs empowered validation methodologies in order to ensure the correctness of the developed UI-based applications. This paper investigates the applicability of reverse engineering and formal approaches to the validation of UIs correctness. The approach is the following. An user interface’s abstract model is derived starting from its Java/Swing source code. This formal execution model is then used to prove that the developed interactive system is in accordance with usability requirements expressed in CTT tasks models.

Human factors methods such as Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) are an important means of improving product usability through user-centred analysis and design. The goal driven nature of HTA is examined in the context of a Human Computer Interaction module in a higher education environment. A study of HTA techniques, exercises, typical errors and engagement is presented in order to determine whether this method promotes learner engagement. The study concludes that it may increase intrinsic motivation and engagement among learners as well as raise awareness of usability.

Orchestra is a new formalism on which we are working in the field of cooperative systems design. In CoCSys methodology for Cooperative Capillary Systems design, we transform partial scenarios describing particular cooperative situations in a more comprehensive Cooperative Behaviour Model (CBM). In this paper, we describe our contribution to the need for a graphical formalism which would be able to express in a natural way, understandable by different actors (users, designers, developers,...) different cooperation situations in an ambient intelligence environment (mobile, context-aware, proactive and ubiquitous). ORCHESTRA is complementary to CTT and UML Use cases, and its objective is to express clearly cooperation situations (explaining easily synchronous or asynchronous cooperation activities) and the role (active or passive) played instantaneously by each actor. We take into account main concepts of ‘cooperative world‘ which are Actors, Roles, Groups, Tasks, Processes, Artefacts (Tools and Objects) and Contexts (Platforms, Situations and Users). With Orchestra formalism we try to express by a sort of music staff individual and collective behaviours. In this way we can model either individual works or organized collective activities. We present this formalism, its metamodel and associated patterns expressing typical configurations of cooperation facilitating their reuse.

This paper proposes an integration of task modeling and object-orien ted analysis approaches. We argue that task–based approaches are more appropriate to analyze existing working situations and to elicit user needs. In subsequent stages like design and implementation, an object-oriented approach is warranted since most of the developer’s skills, tech niques, and tools are better matched to object-oriented representations. We show that such amal ga ma tion, when supported by syste ma tic trans for mation from a goal- and action-oriented perspective to “thinking in objects”, can have several advan tages for both approaches.

This paper explores and discusses the application of pattern decomposition and interaction design approach in pattern layout design. First we introduce a Pattern Decomposition Representation Model (PDM). In this model, the reusable parts of a pattern are extracted as pattern primitives. At the meantime, a module separated from pattern primitives is defined by the abstract structure of the pattern. Next, the interaction design approach based on the design context and the knowledge-based promotion is proposed and the implementation is presented at the end.

Mobile and ubiquitous systems require task models for addressing the challenges of adaptivity and situation-aware assistance. Today, both challenges are seen as separate issues in system development, addressed by different modeling concepts. We propose an approach for a unified modeling concept that uses annotated hierarchical task trees for synthesizing models for both areas from a common basic description.

Design patterns serve the documentation and sharing of proven solutions for recurring design problems. Additionally, patterns can provide guidance on design alternatives. In this paper we present a pattern-based framework to support the designer in the exploration and evaluation of design alternatives and their tradeoffs. Based upon the systematic identification of recurring design problems and solution alternatives and their tradeoffs the framework consists of a generic hierarchy of design problems and solution alternatives as well as of two generic interaction design pattern templates. The presented framework can be used to specify design problems and existing solutions for a specific platform or application domain as well as to think about design alternatives and to develop new solutions. In addition, it can be used to structure interaction design pattern collections. The approach is illustrated by a case for interactive television applications.

As users become more and more demanding about the software environments they use, they need environments offering them the possibility to integrate new tools in response to their emerging needs. However, most high-level component composition solutions remain out of reach for users. Thanks to an innovative approach that tends to provide more understandable components, we propose in this paper a new mechanism in order to assist high-level component composition. This approach proposes to realize this composition through tasks models assembling. The assistance we propose is based on an adaptation of tree algebra operators and is able to automatically merge tasks trees in order to assist high-level component integration in a more global environment.

The ongoing adoption of the latest Web development patterns such as AJAX is helping to enhance the user experience on the Web. Moreover, there is now API-based support from various vendors that allow seamless fusion of disparate data sources into a single application. However, the barrier for Web designers to integrate such features into their Web applications remains high. This hampers a wider proliferation of such novel Web applications. In this paper, we conduct an experiment to see whether visual programming is appropriate for allowing Web designers integrate the aforementioned features. For the experiment, we have developed a prototype, tentatively named WIPER that allows Web designers to incorporate pre-built JavaScript components into live Web pages using drag-and-drop. We combined rapid revision with usability testing to iteratively advance our prototype. Working with users, we have learned that with some targeted refinements, visual programming paradigm can be very effective in achieving our goal.

Task modelling has proven useful as a basis for user interfaces (IU) design. Although different models have been pushed ConcurTaskTrees (CTT) notation has become without any doubt the most extended notation for task model specification. However, this notation suffers from a lack of modularity, making the creation and modification of real-world applications a cumbersome process. In this paper a notation that takes inspiration from CTT is described that allows for the specification of the tasks the user is supposed to perform through the user interface and the dialog between the user and the user interface in an intuitive manner. Furthermore, the notation makes use of an abstract operation set to help in the automatic or semi-automatic generation of a user interface that conforms with the specified model.

HCI pattern languages represent an important software engineering concept and offer proven design and architectural solutions to developers of interactive systems and user interface designers. However, due to their poor organizational structures the effective usage of many existing pattern languages is not clear and easy enough to let developers quickly find appropriate patterns for solving their current design problems. In order to raise pattern language usability, there is a need for a sound definition of the hierarchical structure of pattern languages and a rule based workflow for constructing future pattern languages. The structural approach presented in this paper will provide the designer with a technique to ensure the development of efficient and usable pattern languages.

The

Multimedia Modeling Language

(

MML

) is a platform-independent modeling language for model-driven development of interactive multimedia applications. Using models provides several advantages like well-structured applications and better coordination of the different developer groups involved in the development process. However, the creative tasks – like graphical design of the user interface and the design of media objects – are better supported by traditional informal methods and tools. In particular multimedia authoring tools such as

Adobe Flash

are well established for multimedia application development. In this paper we show how MML and authoring tools can be integrated by the example of Flash. Therefore we transform the MML models into code skeletons which can be directly loaded into the Flash authoring tool to perform the creative design tasks and finalize the application. In that way, the strengths of models and authoring tools are combined. The paper shows the required level of abstraction for the models, introduces a metamodel and a suitable code structure for the Flash platform, and finally presents the transformation.

As a wide variety of interaction devices, modalities has to be supported by user interface developers, model-based user interface development gets increasing attention. Especially if context- and user-awareness comes into play, handcrafting a user interface is rendered almost impossible. In model-based user interface development, usually several models are applied to describe different aspects of the user interface or to provide a varying level of detail. The relations between the models representing those levels of abstractions are established through transformations, a concept which is also applied in software engineering with the Model Driven Architecture (MDA). In this paper we will review several transformation systems and discuss their applicability for model-based user interface development.

In this paper we present a task model for the usability monitoring environment called ErgoMonitor. ErgoMonitor realize an usability evaluation in websites through selective collection and analyses of the data from log files referring to the real interactions that are established between final users and an web interface. Nevertheless, the ErgoMonitor depends on the users expected behaviors previous identification and this activity is conducted by a specialist in usability that must observe the website characteristics or be assisted by traditional usability evaluation previous diagnosis to define which tasks (behaviors) should be inserted in the evaluation script. In this way, we developed a mechanism to register the expected users behaviors conceiving the Monitoring Tasks and Behaviors Model. This mechanism enabled the ErgoMonitor to realize web sites usability evaluations based on their log files.

A number of Web design problems continue to arise, such as: (1) decoupling the various aspects of Web applications (for example, business logic, the user interface, navigation and information architecture; and (2) isolating platform specifics from the concerns common to all Web applications. In the context of a proposal for a model-driven architecture for Web applications, this paper identifies an extensive list of models aimed at providing a pool of proven solutions to these problems. The models span several levels of abstraction such as business, task, dialog, presentation and layout models. The proposed architecture will show how several individual models can be combined at different levels of abstraction into heterogeneous structures, which can be used as building blocks in the development of Web applications.

Nowadays, mobile activities such as m-commerce, m-learning, etc, are being increasingly adopted by people. Information availability will be a key feature in future applications. Public spaces, as shops, libraries, museums, etc do not have enough information available to visitors, mainly due to physical space constraints. In this context, PDAs provide a balance between physical dimensions and processing power capable of supporting Augmented and Immersive Reality (A&IR) features. However, they have several limitations (i.e., space screen). As a result of two usability evaluations of a PDA application currently running at the MCA (The Cutlery Museum of Albacete, Spain) some improvements were found. To reuse these solutions, this paper presents a collection of HCI design patterns for PDAs that run this kind of Space Structured Applications (SSA).

In this paper we introduce a monitoring system to support the user executing tasks in an ambient intelligence environment. In contrast with traditional environments, the goal of the user can not always be defined beforehand, but is determined while the user interacts with the environment. The monitor observes the user’s activities and learns to correlate a set of user actions with a goal. The system maps activities to a task model and reuses these models to take appropriate actions in later similar user actions that are observed.

The term Context of Use has been treated with much attention in HCI in recent years. In this paper, the integration of context information into task models will be described. The notion of context is formulated and used to annotate the task model. The reuse of such context-sensitive task models in light of task patterns is also examined.