Publication statistics
Pub. period:1987-2001
Pub. count:6
Number of co-authors:13
Co-authors
Number of publications with 3 favourite co-authors:
Kristin N. Dick:1Paula D. Raymond:1Mary R. Groshek:1 Productive colleagues
James Ballas's 3 most productive colleagues in number of publications:
David E. Kieras:25J. Gregory Trafton:22Constance L. Heitm..:8
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James Ballas
Has also published under the name of:
"James A. Ballas"
Publications by James Ballas (bibliography)
Kieras, David E., Meyer, David and Ballas, James (2001): Towards Demystification of Direct Manipulation: Cognitive Modeling Charts the Gulf of Execution. In: Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel and Jacob, Robert J. K. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2001 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 31 - April 5, 2001, Seattle, Washington, USA. pp. 128-135.
“Direct manipulation involves a large number of interacting psychological mechanisms that make the performance of a given interface hard to predict on intuitive or informal grounds. This paper applies cognitive modeling to explain the subtle effects produced by using a keypad versus a touchscreen in a performance-critical laboratory task.”
© All rights reserved Kieras et al. and/or ACM Press
Trafton, J. Gregory, Kirschenbaum, Susan S., Tsui, Ted L., Miyamoto, Robert T., Ballas, James and Raymond, Paula D. (2000): Turning Pictures Into Numbers: Extracting and Generating Information from Complex Visualizations. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 53 (5) pp. 827-850.
“We present a study of complex visualization usage by expert meteorological forecasters. We performed a protocol analysis and examined the types of visualizations they examined. We present evidence for how experts are able to make use of complex visualizations. Our findings suggest that users of complex visualizations create qualitative mental models from which they can then generate quantitative information. In order to build their qualitative mental models, forecasters integrated information across multiple visualizations and extracted primarily qualitative information from visualizations in a goal-directed manner. We discuss both theoretical and practical implications of this study.”
© All rights reserved Trafton et al. and/or Academic Press
Ballas, James, Heitmeyer, Constance L. and Perez, Manuel A. (1992): Evaluating Two Aspects of Direct Manipulation in Advanced Cockpits. In: Bauersfeld, Penny, Bennett, John and Lynch, Gene (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 92 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference June 3-7, 1992, Monterey, California. pp. 127-134.
“Increasing use of automation in computer systems, such as advanced cockpits, presents special challenges in the design of user interfaces. The challenge is particularly difficult when automation is intermittent because the interface must support smooth transitions from automated to manual mode. A theory of direct manipulation predicts that this interface style will smooth the transition. Interfaces were designed to test the prediction and to evaluate two aspects of direct manipulation, semantic distance and engagement. Empirical results supported the theoretical prediction and also showed that direct engagement can have some adverse effects on another concurrent manual task. Generalizations of our results to other complex systems are presented.”
© All rights reserved Ballas et al. and/or ACM Press
Mosteller, William S. and Ballas, James (1989): Usability Analysis of Messages from a Security System. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 33rd Annual Meeting 1989. pp. 399-403.
“Most software systems issue messages to reflect their progress in processing users' requests and to report error conditions. By instrumenting systems to collect these messages for later processing, a rich source of information about system and user behavior can be tapped. The work described herein is a study of system and user behavior related to messages, in an actual use setting. Our objective is assessing and improving the interaction with VMSECURE, a user directory management and security package for IBM's VM operating system. (VM is IBM's interactive system for mainframe computers. VMSECURE manages user resources and controls data access.) Pareto's principle to VMSECURE messages and error messages. A few different messages make up most of the traffic. Password prompting provides efficient, effective protection against unauthorized use of VMSECURE. Users of VMSECURE, when they receive an error messages, often re-enter the same, unsuccessful command again. Users of VMSECURE do not improve their error rates with experience, possible due to the low level of daily use they make of the product.”
© All rights reserved Mosteller and Ballas and/or Human Factors Society
Ballas, James and Barnes, Mark E. (1988): Everyday Sound Perception and Aging. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting 1988. pp. 194-197.
“Age related hearing loss is extensively documented in both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies but there are no direct studies of the ability of older persons to perceive everyday sounds. There is evidence suggesting some impairment. Vanderveer (1979) observed that older listeners had difficulty interpreting environmental sounds but did not report any performance data. Demands imposed by the stimulus properties of this type of sound and by the perceptual and cognitive processes found to mediate perception of this sound in college-aged listeners may present difficulty for older listeners. Forty-seven members of a retired organization were given a subset of sounds that had been used in previous identification studies. Identification data for the same set of sounds had been previously obtained from high school and college students (Ballas, Dick,&Groshek, 1987). The ability of the aged group to identify this set of sounds was not significantly different from the ability of a student group. In fact, uncertainties were closely matched except for a few sounds. Directions for future research are discussed.”
© All rights reserved Ballas and Barnes and/or Human Factors Society
Ballas, James, Dick, Kristin N. and Groshek, Mary R. (1987): Failure to Identify "Identifiable" Sounds. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 31st Annual Meeting 1987. pp. 144-146.
“The identifiability of sounds used in the Meaningful Sounds Identification test was measured. Identifiability was quantified with a measure of identification uncertainty. Calculation of this measure involves sorting the identification responses into categories of similar causes. Two exemplar sets of the sounds were used and the response data were analyzed separately by two sorters. All of the sounds were not highly identifiable, as was expected given the use of the test. The results were comparable for the two sets of exemplars, and for the two sorters. The results demonstrate the importance of quantifying sound identifiability.”
© All rights reserved Ballas et al. and/or Human Factors Society
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