Authoritative overview of End-User Development (EUD) including 4 HD video interviews filmed in Rome, Italy. EUD is really all about democratization of computing.
Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Time and place:
2008
Conf. description:
NordiCHI is a biennial conference functioning as the main Nordic forum for human-computer interaction research. NordiCHI is the meeting place for researchers from academia and industry, designers, practitioners, educators and others from a broad range of traditions and communities; therefore the conference takes HCI in the non-limited sense of research and practice addressing the design and use of interactive technology.
The following articles are from "Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction":
Articles
p. 103-112
Enquist, Henrik and Tollmar, Konrad (2008): The memory stone: a personal ICT device in health care. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 103-112. Available online
“New technology enables novel ways of sharing information between health care recipients and providers. In this study, however, we found that the medical information for pregnant women in Denmark is located in a number of different places, that midwives and doctors spend a considerable amount of time administrating data, and that consultations are felt to be rather inefficient. This paper describes these problems and some solutions. We explore the idea of providing each woman with a digital artifact, called the Memory Stone. The goal is to supply them with tools to collect and review clinical and personal information concerning their pregnancies. The paper discusses: (1) the user-centered methodology for development of a personal device for health care information, (2) the design and evaluation of prototypes, and (3) critical issues concerning the introduction of novel personal ICT in a health care setting. The main focus is on the experiences and interests of the individual pregnant woman in the study. Several insights were gained into more general pervasive health care issues, including technical and ethical ones as well as safety and security concerns.”
Eriksson, Elina, Gulliksen, Jan and Cajander, Åsa (2008): Introducing usability roles in public authorities. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 113-122. Available online
“One of the most common ways of introducing usability into development work in a public authority is by employing a usability professional. But how successful is this strategy when it comes to increasing focus on usability in the organization and how successful have these usability professionals been in introducing usability activities into the development work in their organizations? This paper is based on five case studies on the introduction of usability professionals in public authorities in Sweden. These different ways of introducing usability are discussed and analyzed. Based on this data we draw conclusions about what to consider in order to achieve a successful introduction of usability. Interviews with nine usability professionals were conducted all of which were recorded, analyzed and condensed into the case studies presented. One lesson learned from the case studies is the importance of a formal title as it shapes interpretations of what usability is about. Another issue discussed is the usefulness of a formal job description, and personal characteristics of the person working with usability. Based on the case studies we draw the conclusion that a senior usability professional is to be preferred since introduction of usability often implies organizational change as well as conflicts and discussions at a management level. Another conclusion that can be drawn from the studies is that usability work is more successful in the short perspective if it contributes directly to the design and program code instead of focusing on strategic levels such as policy, evaluation of existing systems and method development.”
Ferreira, Pedro, Sanches, Pedro, Höök, Kristina and Jaensson, Tove (2008): License to chill!: how to empower users to cope with stress. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 123-132. Available online
“There exists today a paucity of tools and devices that empower people to take control over their everyday behaviors and balance their stress levels. To overcome this deficit, we are creating a mobile service, Affective Health, where we aim to provide a holistic approach towards health by enabling users to make a connection between their daily activities and their own memories and subjective experiences. This construction is based upon values detected from certain bodily reactions that are then visualized on a mobile phone. Accomplishing this entailed figuring out how to provide real-time feedback without making the individual even more stressed, while also making certain that the representation empowered rather than controlled them. Useful design feedback was derived from testing two different visualizations on the mobile in a Wizard of Oz study. In short, we found that a successful design needs to: feel alive, allow for interpretative openness, include short-term history, and be updated in real-time. We also found that the interaction did not increase our participants stress reactions.”
Atterer, Richard (2008): Model-based automatic usability validation: a tool concept for improving web-based UIs. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 13-22. Available online
“This paper describes an approach for improving automated usability tool support during the development of websites. Existing usability and accessibility validators only analyse the HTML code of a page when they create a report of possible problems. However, when a web engineering method is used to create a website, additional information is available in the form of models which describe the site. An automated validator can use these models to verify usability guidelines (such as "text on the web page should be easy to understand by the target audience") with higher accuracy. It can also perform automatic validation in situations where existent tools only output instructions for manual inspection by the developer. The paper systematically analyses existent guidelines and tools, and identifies ways in which the use of a model can improve verification quality. An extension to existing web engineering models is necessary to support automated checkers. It specifies properties of the users, the technical platform and the environment of use. A flexible approach allows the models to be used by validators running inside an integrated development environment, but also at a later time, without access to the development environment. Finally, the prototype of a model-based automatic usability validator is presented. It features verification of a number of guidelines which cannot be automated by existent validation approaches.”
Fredriksson, Jonas, Ryen, Sven Berg and Fjeld, Morten (2008): Real-time 3D hand-computer interaction: optimization and complexity reduction. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 133-141. Available online
“This paper presents a low-cost method for enabling 3D hand-computer interaction. The method, accompanied by a system, uses the frame capturing functionality of a single consumer-grade webcam. Our recent work has been focused on examining and realizing a less complex system. The presented method reduces the tracking effort to only one reference marker: a color-coded bracelet that helps locate the part of the captured frame containing the user's hand. The located area contains all the information needed to extract hand rotation and finger angle data. To facilitate hand feature extraction, we have outfitted the user's hand with a specially coded glove. The glove is equipped with two square palm markers, a marker on either side of the hand, and five distinctly shaded finger sheaths. We believe that an approach that only tracks only one marker will be more efficient than similar methods that track each finger separately. The method is further simplified by using spatial properties, drawn from physiological characteristics of the human hand, to limit the areas considered by the algorithm. Some challenges regarding webcam limitations may arise when attempting to carry this method into effect, including problems related to image noise and limited image- and color-resolution. Overlapping hands and fingers, hand positioning outside the field of view, and interference by local light sources are other exigent factors to consider.”
Friedman, Batya, Höök, Kristina, Gill, Brian, Eidmar, Lina, Prien, Catherine Sallmander and Severson, Rachel (2008): Personlig integritet: a comparative study of perceptions of privacy in public places in Sweden and the United States. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 142-151. Available online
“In this paper we report on a cross-cultural study of people's judgments about privacy in public places. Replicating and extending a previously published study conducted in the US, 350 surveys and 30 interviews were conducted on a university campus in a major city in Sweden. Participants were recruited on campus while walking through a major public through fare which was being captured by a video camera and displayed in real-time in a room in a campus building overlooking the area. We analyze the Swedish data alone and also report comparative analyses with the previously published US data. Results showed in general Swedes are substantially more concerned about privacy in public places than their counterparts in the US. In both countries, women generally expressed more concern than men, but this gender gap was greater in the US than Sweden. Discussion focuses on cross-cultural perspectives on privacy in public and implications for interaction design.”
Gong, Jun, Tarasewich, Peter and MacKenzie, I. Scott (2008): Improved word list ordering for text entry on ambiguous keypads. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 152-161. Available online
“We present a design methodology for small ambiguous keypads, where input often produces a list of candidate words for a given desired word. The methodology uses context through semantic relatedness and a part-of-speech language model to improve the order of candidate words and, thus, reduce the overall number of keystrokes per character entered. Simulations yield improvements in text entry speed of about 10% and reductions in errors of about”
Heijboer, Marigo and Hoven, Elise van den (2008): Keeping up appearances: interpretation of tangible artifact design. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 162-171. Available online
“The design and interaction of physical game artifacts is becoming increasingly important for the design of digital tabletop games. In this paper a study is described investigating the differences in interpretations of realistic and abstract game artifacts comparing children and adults. A game was created on a digital tabletop as a carrier for the user evaluation presented in this paper. The appearance of the game artifacts was explored and a family of each of the artifacts was created. The interpretations of each of the individual artifacts and their different visual appearances were tested to determine whether children rank and interpret the functionalities of the artifacts differently than adults. The results showed that overall the understanding of abstract artifacts compared to realistic ones was best for both children and adults. It also indicated there was no significant difference in the interpretations of the realistic and abstract artifacts between children and adults.”
Heuten, Wilko, Henze, Niels, Boll, Susanne and Pielot, Martin (2008): Tactile wayfinder: a non-visual support system for wayfinding. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 172-181. Available online
“Digital maps and route descriptions on a PDA have become very popular for navigation, not the least with the advent of the iPhone and its Google Maps application. A visual support for wayfinding, however, is not reasonable or even possible all the time. A pedestrian must pay attention to traffic on the street, a hiker should concentrate on the narrow trail, and a blind person relies on other modalities to find her way. To overcome these limitations, we developed a non-visual support for wayfinding that guides and keeps a mobile user en route by a tactile display. We designed a belt with vibrators that indicates directions and deviations from the path in an accurate and unobtrusive way. Our first user evaluation showed that on an open field without any landmarks the participants stayed well to given test routes and that wayfinding support is possible with our Tactile Wayfinder.”
Holone, Harald, Misund, Gunnar, Tolsby, Håkon and Kristoffersen, Steinar (2008): Aspects of personal navigation with collaborative user feedback. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 182-191. Available online
“Inspired by systems based on user generated content, we have developed a prototype named OurWay, a collaborative route planning system utilizing user feedback (rating of route segments) to provide quality routes adapted to the users' abilities and needs. We report from an indoor experiment where users in wheelchairs solved navigational tasks with our prototype. Log data, observations, and interviews serve as a basis for discussing the feasibility of the OurWay concept. We find that OurWay yields better routes for all users with aggregated route segment ratings produced throughout the experiment. However, ratings were largely produced by each individual to accomplish a selfish goal, namely that of solving a navigational task. In this respect, rating can be seen as a by-product of use, rather than as an intentional action on behalf of a community.”
Jansson, Maria, Mörtberg, Christina and Mirijamdotter, Anita (2008): Participation in e-home healthcare @ North Calotte. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 192-200. Available online
“Participation and the contribution of participatory design methods and techniques are explored in the context of a Scandinavian Home Healthcare project. The project was undertaken during 2004-2005. Its aim was to introduce mobile ICT equipment to health care workers in order to improve planning, including quality and precision of information exchange. The study was designed according to Participatory Action Research and Participatory Design principles. Methods employed in the project were observations, interviews, future workshops, and story boards to actively involve different stakeholders. The experience of the project indicates that, although the rhetoric was that of a participatory design and research project, participants are not equally regarded in terms of experiences and knowledge of the actual practice. Assumptions about technology influence development and implementation at the expense of the actual care activity. Further, participation and participatory design techniques used in the project demonstrate the complexity of home healthcare and the necessity to involve all the different occupational groups involved in the care of the client. However, organisational boundaries reinforced shortcomings in crossfunctional and cross organisational cooperation. A final conclusion is that time for collaborative and collegial reflections is a necessity to support the learning process.”
Jung, Heekyoung, Stolterman, Erik A., Ryan, Will, Thompson, Tonya and Siegel, Marty (2008): Toward a framework for ecologies of artifacts: how are digital artifacts interconnected within a personal life?. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 201-210. Available online
“Assuming that an interactive artifact cannot be fully understood by itself due to their increasing number, we explored how individual artifacts are related to each other and how those relationships can be investigated for further design and research implications. This study suggests a concept of ecology of artifacts to describe any implicit or explicit relationships among interactive artifacts in one's personal life. We conducted two types of studies -- personal inventory study and an ecology map study -- to explore multiple dimensions for understanding a personal ecology of artifacts. We expect the knowledge of artifact ecology would help designers and researchers in the field of HCI to create and analyze interactive artifacts considering their dynamic interplays in an increasingly ubiquitous technology environment.”
Keinonen, Turkka (2008): User-centered design and fundamental need. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 211-219. Available online
“This paper will discuss whether User-Centered Design (UCD) is capable and/or oriented towards satisfying users' fundamental needs. At face value, UCD is the advocate of the user in product development, but do its actual practices and values address what is fundamentally important for users? The question will be addressed by starting with a moral philosophical discussion for separating the concept of 'fundamental needs' from 'survival needs', occasional 'wishes' or instrumental 'necessary conditions'. After being equipped with a satisfactory conception of the fundamental need, two conditions will be formulated to characterize UCD practices that orient towards need satisfaction. Protection conditions will address design criteria, and examine whether UCD practice defends users from harm. Appreciation condition is related to the conception of the user within UCD, and tests UCD agents' tendency to avoid reducing users. The discussion will show that the historical development of UCD from a limited Human-Machine paradigm towards more socially focused and interventionist approaches has influenced on its need satisfying orientation. The protection condition, which relatively well described early UCD activities, i.e. usability engineering, in 1980s and early 1990s, has become too limited to explain the widening scope of interests towards the end of this decade. On the contrary, the appreciation condition, is better met by the present holistic and active user conception than the previous reduced users defined by their roles as computer operators.”
Kierkels, Jeanine and Hoven, Elise van den (2008): Children's haptic experiences of tangible artifacts varying in hardness. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 221-228. Available online
“In this paper we describe our investigations on the role of material hardness in the haptic experience of tangible artifacts. Without seeing the artifacts children had to rank their experience on a scale of two antonyms while touching and holding these artifacts. In this experiment it was shown that children have no problem ranking hardness. Two groups could be identified: soft artifacts were found to be cute, speedy and warm, e.g., and hard artifacts boring, sad and old-fashioned. We think that paying attention to this factor in the design of tangible user interfaces for children can improve their experience.”
Kortbek, Karen Johanne and Grønbæk, Kaj (2008): Communicating art through interactive technology: new approaches for interaction design in art museums. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 229-238. Available online
“This paper discusses new approaches to interaction design for communication of art in the physical museum space. In contrast to the widespread utilization of interactive technologies in cultural heritage and natural science museums it is generally a challenge to introduce technology in art museums without disturbing the domain of the art works. To explore the possibilities of communicating art through the use of technology, and to minimize disturbance of the artworks, we apply four main approaches in the communication: 1) gentle audio augmentation of art works; 2) conceptual affinity of art works and remote interactive installations; 3) using the body as an interaction device; 4) consistent audio-visual cues for interaction opportunities. The paper describes the application of these approaches for communication of inspirational material for a Mariko Mori exhibition. The installations are described and argued for. Experiences with the interactive communication are discussed based on qualitative and quantitative evaluations of visitor reactions. It is concluded that the installations are received well by the visitors, who perceived exhibition and communication as a holistic user experience with a seamless interactive communication.”
Bak, Jakob Otkjær, Nguyen, Kim, Risgaard, Peter and Stage, Jan (2008): Obstacles to usability evaluation in practice: a survey of software development organizations. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 23-32. Available online
“This paper reports from a combined questionnaire survey and interview study of obstacles for deploying usability evaluation in software development organizations. It was conducted in a limited geographical area. The purpose of the questionnaire survey was to determine whether software development organizations in that area were evaluating the usability of their software and to identify key obstacles. It revealed that 29 of 39 software development organizations conducted some form of usability evaluation. The purpose of the interview study was to gain more insight into the obstacles that were expressed. It involved 10 of the 39 software development organizations. Our results show, that the understanding of usability evaluation is a major obstacle. Furthermore, the two most significant obstacles were resource demands and the mindset of developers. These obstacles were not only an obstacle for more organizations to deploy usability evaluation, but also a concern for the software development organizations, that had deployed usability evaluations in their development process.”
Krisler, Brian and Alterman, Richard (2008): Training towards mastery: overcoming the active user paradox. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 239-248. Available online
“Few users ever attain mastery with an application. Mastery, the state of knowing how to work efficiently with an application requires an understanding of the underlying conceptual model of the system. The active user paradox is one of the main inhibitors of mastery. In this study, we present HotKeyCoach, a training method designed to insert into the flow of the activity learning events that provide contextually relevant training and help the user to circumvent the active user paradox in the pursuit of application mastery.”
Langer, Lars and Frøkjær, Erik (2008): Improving web search transparency by using a Venn diagram interface. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 249-256. Available online
“The user interfaces of the most popular search engines are largely the same. Typically, users are presented with an ordered list of documents, which provide limited help if users are having trouble finding the information they need. This article presents an interface called the Venn Diagram Interface (VDI) that offers users improved search transparency. The VDI allows users to see how each term, or group of terms, in a query contributes to the entire result set of a search. Furthermore, it allows users to browse the result sets generated by each of these terms. In a test with 10 participants, the VDI was compared against a standard web search interface, Google. With the VDI, users were able to find more documents of higher relevance and were more inclined to continue searching. Their level of interactivity was higher, the quality of the answers they found was perceived to be better. Eight out of 10 users preferred the VDI.”
Lehmuskallio, Asko and Sarvas, Risto (2008): Snapshot video: everyday photographers taking short video-clips. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 257-265. Available online
“Camera phones and consumer digital cameras number hundreds of millions worldwide and most of them have the ability to take video in addition to photographs. Public discussions, marketing, and academic research often emphasize the new and innovative ways in which people use their ubiquitous digital cameras, especially camera phones, in combination with the Internet. In this paper we present our qualitative study of 13 people and their picture taking habits with regular cameras and camera phones. We focus on their videography practices in the context of their general use of photo and video media. Our results contradict the general assumption that the availability of ubiquitous video technology has significantly changed people's practices in home-mode pictorial communication. The models for capturing videos are often taken from situations in which previously taking snapshot photographs was the only option. Therefore, we suggest that mobile media creation and sharing technology has only gradually changed people's snapshot photography and videography practices.”
Lindroth, Tomas and Bergquist, Magnus (2008): Breadcrumbs of interaction: situating personal information management. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 266-273. Available online
“The area of Personal Information Management (PIM) primarily deals with how to store, retrieve and share files and other interactional artifacts. According to previous research there is a lack of field studies of actual PIM practices, especially mobile practices. In this article we present findings from an ethnographical study of wireless practice of laptop computers. The study reports on the role of historical interaction resources in a mobile PIM practice as well as the contextual effects on PIM. The findings reveal a PIM-practice highly connected to use situations not always departing from manipulating files and folders, which has been a focus in many previous studies. Designers are encouraged to explore the situated intimate and immediate design space found to be of great importance for the use of these so called Breadcrumbs of Interaction.”
Loregian, Marco (2008): Undo for mobile phones: does your mobile phone need an undo key? do you?. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 274-282. Available online
“The undo function is not accessory, but still it has not been introduced to mobile devices in an appropriate way. Undo is still shaped to fit text editing, and it has changed a little only for graphical editing so far. In this paper, we report the results of a survey with which we investigated why and how to add this functionality to regular mobile phones -- not only to smartphones or high-end handheld devices. Our respondents suggested an undo model that is linear, sequential, with variable granularity (according to the context of use) and requiring confirmation before execution (both to improve awareness and avoid additional mistakes).”
Mathiasen, Niels Raabjerg and Bødker, Susanne (2008): Threats or threads: from usable security to secure experience?. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 283-289. Available online
“While the domain of security dependent technologies brings new challenges to HCI research it seems that the results and breakthroughs of HCI have not been used in design of security dependent technologies. With exceptions, work in the research field of usable security may be criticized for focusing mainly on adjusting user behavior to behave securely. With our background in newer HCI perspectives we address secure interaction from the perspective of security technology as experience. We analyze a number of collected user stories to understand what happens when everyday users encounter security dependent technologies. We apply McCarthy&Wright's [12] experience framework to the security domain and our collected stories. We point out that there are significant differences between being secure and having a secure experience, and conclude that classical usable security, focus on people's immediate security experience, and the full focus on experience proposed by McCarthy&Wright lead to three very different interaction concerns, analytically and as regards design. We illustrate these differences by examples, and conclude with a discussion of how to advance the field of usable security.”
Mazzone, Emanuela, Read, Janet C. and Beale, Russell (2008): Design with and for disaffected teenagers. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 290-297. Available online
“This paper describes how an e-learning product for teenagers was developed using design sessions based on a participatory design approach. The product, in the form of a computer game, is the outcome of a project that aims to improve teenagers' emotional intelligence. The specific user group is from institutes for pupils that had previously been excluded from mainstream education. The novelty in the approach is that participants were involved in designing a tool that was intended to modify their emotional behaviour -- for this discussion, it is the participation in the process that is critical, less so the end product. The project and the design approaches are described and the participatory activity is reflected on. The benefits resulting from the design sessions were bi-directional: the engagement with the prospective users was valuable both for the actual contribution to the product design and as an experience for the participants.”
McGookin, David, Brewster, Stephen A. and Jiang, WeiWei (2008): Investigating touchscreen accessibility for people with visual impairments. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 298-307. Available online
“Touchscreen computing devices such as the iPhone are becoming more common. However this technology is largely inaccessible to people with visual impairments. We present the results of a requirements capture study that illustrates the problems with touchscreen accessibility, and the choices visually impaired people make when choosing assistive technology. We investigate ways of overcoming touchscreen accessibility problems by comparing a raised paper overlay touchscreen based MP3 player, with a touchscreen gesture based player. Twelve blindfolded participants, and one visually impaired person, were able to operate both players, though there were problems with short impact related operations in the gesture player. From our results we provide guidelines for future designers, to help them exploit the potential of touchscreen technology for visually impaired people.”
Alsos, Ole Andreas and Dahl, Yngve (2008): Toward a best practice for laboratory-based usability evaluations of mobile ICT for hospitals. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 3-12. Available online
“The dynamic nature of clinical work makes it challenging to assess the usability of mobile information and communication technology (ICT) for hospitals. To achieve some of the realism of field evaluations, combined with the control of laboratory-based evaluations, we have conducted usability tests of prototypes in a laboratory custom designed as a full-scale ward section. Nurses and physicians acting out simulated clinical scenarios have used the prototypes. This paper reports on the general methodological lessons learned from three such formative usability evaluations. We have learned that the physical test environment, the test scenarios, and the prototypes form three variables that need to reflect a sufficient amount of realism and concreteness in order to help generate valid test results. At the same time, these variables are tools that can help control and focus the evaluation on specific issues that one wants to gather data on. We have also learned that encouraging reflection among participants and using detailed multi-perspective recordings of usage can help form a more precise understanding of how mobile ICT can accommodate clinical work. The current paper aims to inform work toward a best practice for laboratory-based evaluations of mobile ICT for hospitals.”
Müller, Jörg, Jentsch, Marc, Kray, Christian and Krüger, Antonio (2008): Exploring factors that influence the combined use of mobile devices and public displays for pedestrian navigation. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 308-317. Available online
“Large displays are rapidly proliferating in public spaces, and could therefore be an attractive resource to support nomadic users in such contexts, e. g. by providing additional screen real estate or by augmenting services delivered through a mobile device. While previous work on combining public displays and mobile devices has identified a number of benefits of this combination, it is not yet clear if users will actually use such a system and if they do, why and when. In this paper, we present two initial user studies investigating factors relevant to user acceptance and usability in the context of a deployed system that provides pedestrian navigation support through a combination of mobile devices and public displays. Based on the results from a repertory grid analysis, we identify dimensions that are relevant for users deciding whether to use a public display or not, and discuss implications for the design of such systems.”
Oyugi, Cecilia, Dunckley, Lynne and Smith, Andy (2008): Evaluation methods and cultural differences: studies across three continents. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 318-325. Available online
“This paper reviews issues and problems that arise in cross-cultural usability evaluations. It reports two separate empirical studies of a number of well-known techniques with UK, African and Indian users. The studies examine the effectiveness of methods based on think-aloud protocols, including the DUCE method, to elicit users' views. The results from all the studies show that these established Western methods are less effective with users from other cultures. It suggests that the reasons for this are the consequences of deep-rooted differences in personal interactions in different cultures. This paper provides evidence to guide choices for applications involving users from India and Africa.”
Reily, Ken, Ludford, Pamela J. and Terveen, Loren (2008): Sharescape: an interface for place annotation. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 326-333. Available online
“Many people use the Internet to search for geographically local information, with a growing number of websites dedicated to this task. However, it is not clear exactly how users integrate geographic search with content-based search, nor how to obtain reliable information about places in a geographic region. We created Sharescape, a map-based application in which information is contributed by community members. We conducted a user study to evaluate the utility of this means of obtaining information and to investigate how users integrate geographic and content-based search. Our results suggest that 1) maps create an implicit context in an interface that designers should honor, 2) community-maintained information about local geography has important benefits over information mined from web sites, and 3) users often are not aware of the privacy implications of their actions, and therefore designers should incorporate special privacy safeguards.”
Bakker, Saskia, Markopoulos, Panos and Kort, Yvonne de (2008): OPOS: an observation scheme for evaluating head-up play. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 33-42. Available online
“The concept of Head-Up Games [18] advocates that pervasive games of the future should be designed to evoke play patterns akin to those of traditional outdoor games. This tenet, while appealing, is ill defined without a clear description of these behaviors. Below we introduce OPOS, an observation scheme that can be used to evaluate Head-Up Games and, more generally, outdoor pervasive games intended for children. The observation scheme has been evaluated through its application in observing play with traditional outdoor games and a purpose made Head-Up Game. The study involved 24 children of 10-11 years old; it was found that the proposed observation scheme is objective and reliable, helping evaluators compare pervasive games regarding the play behaviors they provoke.”
Svensson, Marcus Sanchez and Sokoler, Tomas (2008): Ticket-to-talk-television: designing for the circumstantial nature of everyday social interaction. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 334-343. Available online
“In this paper we discuss a particular perspective on interactivity and sociability in the design of new TV technologies for social interaction. We will argue that current research on Social TV builds on a too narrow conception of interaction in everyday social life. In consequence, rather than turning the TV media itself into an arena for peer-to-peer synchronous interaction amongst TV viewers we will discuss the idea of Social TV as a resource that when part of a larger socio-material fabric can help accommodate the circumstantial nature of social interactions as they emerge and play out on a moment-to-moment basis throughout everyday life beyond the TV screens. We take the phenomenon of ticket-to-talk as our point of departure when analyzing observations made during a study of the ways senior citizens go about socializing in everyday face-to-face situations. We then discuss how this analysis in combination with a series of design-oriented workshops with a group of senior citizens, have guided the design of our Ticket-to-Talk-Television example concept. We will reflect upon the overall approach as well as the design activities that were undertaken in relation to the concept developed.”
Shi, Qingxin (2008): A field study of the relationship and communication between Chinese evaluators and users in thinking aloud usability tests. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 344-352. Available online
“Thinking aloud is the most widely applied usability evaluation method. In order to get reliable usability problems, it is necessary for the evaluators to establish a supportive relationship and communicate effectively with the users. This study investigated the relation and communication between the evaluators and test users in Chinese usability testing sessions. Field observations and interviews were conducted in five companies in Beijing. This research was based mainly on Nisbett's cultural theory and Boren and Ramey's thinking aloud model. The results of the study showed that Chinese users focused mainly on tasks, while evaluators focused on both users and tasks. Further, Chinese users did not think aloud actively; thus, in order to encourage users to speak out, effective communication skills were required for Chinese evaluators. Retrospective thinking aloud and explanation were also used in the tests. Finally, it discussed that communication was appropriate for the formative evaluations, but not for the summative evaluations.”
Svanaes, Dag and Gulliksen, Jan (2008): Understanding the context of design: towards tactical user centered design. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 353-362. Available online
“It is widely recognized that system usability requires active involvement of end-users in all phases of software development, and there is currently a broad consensus among researchers and practitioners in the field as to what constitutes a good user-centered design process. Despite this, many systems development projects still fail when it comes to addressing usability issues and appropriately involving users in the design process. We find that a project's boundary conditions are becoming increasingly important for the potential impact of user-centered design activities, and hence the success of the end result of the project. We propose and define "context of design" as a concept to embrace the socio-technical system in which user-centered design takes place. The context of design includes, but is not limited to, the internal structure of the developer and the client organizations, contractual and tender issues, software engineering tools, and stakeholder agendas and relations. We illustrate the reasoning with various cases in which user-centered design has been constrained by factors in the context of design. We recommend that user-centered-design projects give priority to an early identification of factors in the context of design that pose risks to end-product usability. By analyzing the context of design for each project, we may be able to better tailor user-centered design activities to reach the goal of building a more usable end-result.”
Taylor, Alex S., Wyche, Susan P. and Kaye, Joseph Jofish (2008): Pottering by design. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 363-372. Available online
“The last decade of work in HCI has seen an increasing emphasis on the role of technology in the home, and a corresponding need for novel approaches for studying the needs, activities and relationships that constitute home life, so as to inform technology design. In this vein, we report on a particular aspect of home life in Britain: pottering. We investigate the ways in which pottering -- unplanned and serendipitous tidying, cleaning, gardening and minor home improvement -- can be used as a lens to understand the non-task-focused roles that technology may play in the home. We also describe the strategies we used to study this curious class of activities and hopefully illustrate how open, and sometimes opportunistic, approaches to research can have value.”
Vaittinen, Tuomas, Laakso, Katri and Itäranta, Joonas (2008): Kuukkeli: design and evaluation of location-based service with touch UI for hikers. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 373-382. Available online
“This paper presents the design and prototype implementation of a location-based service aimed for hikers. Maps and navigation in urban areas are already well-researched topics but it can be argued that greater demands are placed on location-based services in non-urban areas -- a field which has not been researched in detail yet. Studying these demands more closely provided us valuable information about location-based services in general as well. The feature set of the prototype was chosen to help users in their typical outdoor needs, such as map handling, basic navigation, and communication. In the design, we took advantage of the capabilities of touch screens, such as direct interaction by finger pointing. To validate our design in actual use context and to get feedback for improving the design, a user trial with 16 hikers was arranged. As a result, we deepened our understanding of the features hikers expect from location-based services and found requirements for devices used to implement them. In addition, we identified several areas of improvement in the user interface of the prototype, which can also be applied to other similar systems.”
Weiss, Roman and Luca, Alexander De (2008): PassShapes: utilizing stroke based authentication to increase password memorability. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 383-392. Available online
“Authentication today mostly relies on passwords or personal identification numbers (PINs). Therefore the average user has to remember an increasing amount of PINs and passwords. Unfortunately, humans have limited capabilities for remembering abstract alphanumeric sequences. Thus, many people either forget them or use very simple ones, which implies several security risks. In this work, a novel authentication method called PassShapes is presented. In this system users authenticate themselves to a computing system by drawing simple geometric shapes constructed of an arbitrary combination of eight different strokes. We argue that using such shapes will allow more complex and thus more secure authentication tokens with a lower cognitive load and higher memorability. To prove these assumptions, two user studies have been conducted. The memorability evaluation showed that the PassShapes concept is able to increase the memorability when users can practice the PassShapes several times. This effect is even increasing over time. Additionally, a prototype was implemented to conduct a usability study. The results of both studies indicate that the PassShapes approach is able to provide a usable and memorable authentication method.”
Xu, Yan, Spasojevic, Mirjana, Gao, Jiang and Jacob, Matthias (2008): Designing a vision-based mobile interface for in-store shopping. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 393-402. Available online
“Due to the situated nature of mobile applications, designing them requires more emphasis on users' cognitive load and interaction style. Considering that users can only devote limited and fragmented attention to mobile interface when moving between locations, what interaction-styles and services are appropriate to a specific user scenario? To explore this issue for in-store shopping, we designed a vision-based mobile interface for supporting shopper's communicational and organizational requirements on-the-go. With this interface, the physical objects can be automatically recognized by the camera phone in real time, so that shoppers can easily access related internet services. In this paper, we present an ethnographic study from which the design rationale is generated, and a formative evaluation to understand how mobile visual interface can be used in the field. The issues uncovered and lessons learned are applicable to our design improvement. Moreover, we use this to motivate the discussion on vision-based mobile interfaces in general, including embodied interaction and alternate interfaces.”
Mahmud, Abdullah Al, Mubin, Omar, Shahid, Suleman and Martens, Jean-Bernard (2008): Designing and evaluating the tabletop game experience for senior citizens. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 403-406. Available online
“In this paper, we report on the design and evaluation of a tabletop game especially created for senior citizens. The game is intended to provide leisure and fun and is played with four players on an augmented tabletop. It evolved from existing games and rules that are popular and familiar amongst senior citizens. Several aspects that are part of the gaming experience, such as immersion, flow, affect and, challenge, were assessed experimentally. The gaming experience was measured relatively by subjectively comparing user reactions across two sessions, one using a conventional board game and another using a digital tabletop version of the same game. Our results indicate that senior citizens found the tabletop version of the game to be more immersive and absorbing. We also discuss some implications to tabletop game design that can be deduced from the qualitative feedback provided by our participants.”
Atterer, Richard and Lorenzi, Philip (2008): A heatmap-based visualization for navigation within large web pages. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 407-410. Available online
“When a web browser is used to read documents which consist of multiple long pages, such as technical documentation, today's browsers only offer inadequate support for users to orient themselves within these pages. Even if a table of contents is present, no information about the size of individual sections is available. Furthermore, when jumping to different parts of a document, there is no way to find sections that have been visited earlier -- the browser's history functionality only works on the level of URLs, not within pages. In this paper, we introduce a tool that increases users' awareness of the organization of long HTML pages and visualizes their own navigation movements within these pages. Our JavaScript prototype uses a simple user interface concept which concentrates on automatic collection of information. It visualizes section sizes in a table of contents which is generated for all pages. Additionally, a heatmap highlights those parts of each page which have been viewed for extended amounts of time. In a user study, our concept is compared to the predominant existing in-page navigation aid, a fixed table of contents at the top of the page.”
Atterer, Richard and Tafelmayer, Max (2008): Treemap-based website navigation for non-hierarchical, interlinked sites: the trackback map. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 411-414. Available online
“Typically, the navigation area of a website is organized as a hierarchical menu of pages and subpages. For some types of websites, such as blogs, this is not a suitable choice: The importance of blog articles changes dynamically, e.g. depending on their age or the amount of public interest they generate. Navigation to other blogs via links to related articles (so-called "trackbacks") plays an important role, both to find related content and to estimate the relevance of an unknown blog based on the reputation of the blog that links to it. In this paper, we propose a new, interactive type of navigation area which addresses the special needs of websites with a flat hierarchy that link to related sites. The Trackback Map relies on a treemap to visualize the relative importance of individual articles on a blog at a single glance. By zooming into the map, the user can reach articles on other blogs that link to the current blog's article, or (to any depth) articles that link to those articles. A prototype of the concept has been implemented as a WordPress plugin. In a user study, it is compared to established navigation concepts, e.g. a tag cloud.”
Bilandzic, Mark, Banholzer, Michael, Peev, Deyan, Georgiev, Vesko, Balagtas-Fernandez, Florence and Luca, Alexander De (2008): Laermometer: a mobile noise mapping application. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 415-418. Available online
“Creating noise maps is a complex task. They can be created using modeling approaches that take into account different data such as traffic conditions and the like. Another approach is to use stationary recording stations which provide better results but are costly to maintain. Nevertheless, the benefits of noise maps are worth the effort. Laermometer has been developed to solve the problems of creating noise maps by utilizing mobile phones and their built-in microphones. The main functionality is to provide noise information for any place in the world. Users can add further information like a noise description or comments about the location and its sound level. Every user can view the noise maps and comments, anywhere using their mobile devices. In addition Laermometer brings along a small web interface. With this web interface users can view/edit their profiles, comments and noise descriptions.”
Cabrera, Andrea Botero, Naukkarinen, Anne and Saad-Sulonen, Joanna (2008): Mapping social practices through collaborative exercises and visualizations. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 419-422. Available online
“In this paper, we explore the use of collaborative exercises and mental map visualizations as tools for understanding social practices and exploring co-design opportunities for product and service development. The research is based on material gathered through a case study of a web-based data storage service in its beta stage. We use these tools to study the interconnections of the designed system to an array of other applications, tools and services, which form what we refer to as people's digital ecosystem. Our experiences suggest that taking practices as the unit of analysis is a relevant strategy to bring forward users' own knowledge of their everyday life, and link it to the professional knowledge of developers and designers; and that visualizations and collaborative exercises are relevant design thinking strategies.”
Buzzi, M. Claudia, Buzzi, Marina, Leporini, Barbara and Senette, Caterina (2008): Making Wikipedia editing easier for the blind. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 423-426. Available online
“A key feature of Web 2.0 is the possibility of sharing, creating and editing on-line content. This approach is increasingly used in learning environments to favor interaction and cooperation among students. These functions should be accessible as well as easy to use for all participants. Unfortunately accessibility and usability issues still exist for Web 2.0-based applications. For instance, Wikipedia presents many difficulties for the blind. In this paper we discuss a possible solution for simplifying the Wikipedia editing page when interacting via screen reader. Building an editing interface that conforms to W3C ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) recommendations would overcome accessibility and usability problems that prevent blind users from actively contributing to Wikipedia.”
Bylund, Markus, Höök, Kristina and Pommeranz, Alina (2008): Pieces of identity. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 427-430. Available online
“We describe the motivation, design, and deployment of the Pieces of Identity system. Two goals motivated the system: to provoke a discussion concerning the relationship between privacy and mobile information technology during an inauguration event of a mobile technology research center, and to stir reactions contributing to the widening of the design space of privacy and information and communication technology (ICT). The results contrasts the two well-established preconceptions about privacy that nothing is private anymore and that personal information is best locked away.”
Bjørneseth, Frøy Birte, Dunlop, Mark D. and Strand, Jann Peter (2008): Dynamic positioning systems: usability and interaction styles. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 43-52. Available online
“This paper describes the first steps of a research project directed towards human computer interaction (HCI) within the maritime environment and on maritime equipment. The focus is at this stage mainly on interaction with Dynamic Positioning Systems (DP) and how new interaction styles can be introduced to make the interaction more efficient and less faulty in both standard operations and in safety-critical situations. The initial experiment looks into how a DP operator can operate a DP system by using bi-manual interaction/multi-touch combined with hand-gestures to create a new type of user-experience. The aim for this research is to investigate which gestures feel natural to the DP operator and how/if they can be implemented into a real-life DP system.”
Cabitza, Federico and Loregian, Marco (2008): Much undo about nothing?: investigating why email retraction is less popular than apologizing. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 431-434. Available online
“This paper presents the results of a user study we performed to investigate users' appreciation of undo for email, also called retract, and their perception of the involved interactions and functionalities. A Computer Assisted Web Interview (CAWI) has been conducted on a large set of email users and the results indicate that there is little knowledge of the possibility of retracting email messages even if current implementations meet user requirements. The results get significance from the fact that a large part of respondents declared to read their own messages also after having sent them, looking for possible mistakes.”
Casey, Sean, Lawson, Shaun and Rowland, Duncan (2008): ItchyFeet: motivations for urban geospatial tagging. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 435-438. Available online
“Mobile social computing services are a new breed of application that require new design paradigms to establish themselves in our complex urban environment. This paper introduces 'ItchyFeet', a mobile social awareness service for GPS-enabled mobile handsets, which enables a user and their online social peers to collaboratively author a shared collection of geospatial tags. The application encourages users to place tags at socially important locations; such tags are used as indicators of a user's current and past context on their Facebook profile. We report on findings from a four week user trial of the application, which investigated the factors that motivated users to leave tags. Our results identify some of these factors and highlight the complexity of the dynamic relationship between users, their environment and mobile social services.”
Chang, Yen-ning, Lim, Youn-kyung and Stolterman, Erik A. (2008): Personas: from theory to practices. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 439-442. Available online
“Persona is a technique being used by practicing designers in interaction design. Existing research presents the ways personas should/could be used, or report new efforts of making good use of the persona concept. Comparing to the primary idea of persona, this paper explores some manners with which practitioners actually utilize persona in their work, which has not been emphasized in-depth in current literatures. Our findings provide an initial step showing how practitioners in a creative way develop various usages of personas in practice. We believe this research not only expands the understanding of personas in design, but also gives insights about how practicing designers adapt and make design "tools" their own.”
Chen, Judy and Taylor, Alex S. (2008): entrigue: re-picturing the home. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 443-446. Available online
“Despite the volume of work that has been done on awareness displays, little has been articulated about the ways in which people achieve, understand and maintain awareness in their everyday routines. We reexamine awareness through the design of entrigue, a simple, lightweight photo display that captures the comings and goings in a home. Initial experiences of the system in use indicate that it offers a way of defamiliarizing a space, allowing a household to playfully re-experience the home and the ways in which they moved through it. By drawing attention to the idiosyncratic ways in which people make sense of cues and routines in the home, our results suggest that awareness incorporates a sense of how one engages with the environment, and highlights the notion of intrapersonal awareness as an awareness one can explore of oneself in and through this engagement.”
Czienskowski, Paul, Schellenbach, Michael and Oertzen, Timo von (2008): Feedback-controlled locomotion in virtual environments. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 447-450. Available online
“In this work we propose an extension of our laboratory evaluation framework [1] equipped with a virtual environment (VE). In order to simulate ecologically valid walking in the VE, we evaluate biomechanical processes in gait to control the speed of the treadmill that participants in the laboratory are walking on. Our approach allows predicting the actual speed while walking based on hip movement and additionally on step length. In order to validate our approach we present preliminary results from a study comparing different walking tasks in a VE.”
Das, Subhrajit, McEwan, Tom and Douglas, Donna (2008): Using eye-tracking to evaluate label alignment in online forms. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 451-454. Available online
“We analyze the usability of different label positions in online forms, using an eye-tracking system, with a small sample of UK university-educated users. The results unexpectedly contradict Wroblewski, and recommend right-aligned labels, at least in the context of forms with multiple columns. The work was carried out by an undergraduate intern from an Indian University, who worked with HCI academics at a Scottish University and with a Scottish Usability Consultancy, and we reflect on the benefits of such internships to commercial and academic usability, both in the UK and India.”
Luca, Alexander De and Frauendienst, Bernhard (2008): A privacy-respectful input method for public terminals. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 455-458. Available online
“Nowadays, people often have to input information on public terminals. By doing so, they might disclose information to strangers looking over their shoulders. In this paper we introduce a new way of interacting with public terminals, which offers more privacy by using a personal mobile device to enter private data. It allows the users to choose which information is to be regarded personal, which can then be entered on their mobile device and is hidden from the screen accordingly. Furthermore we created a prototype and conducted a user study measuring users' input performance and to collect opinions about the system's usability and practical value. The paper concludes with some ideas to make the system even more useful.”
Denef, Sebastian, Ramirez, Leonardo, Dyrks, Tobias, Schwartz, Tobias and Al-Akkad, Ahmad-Amr (2008): Participatory design workshops to evaluate multimodal applications. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 459-462. Available online
“In this paper we present our approach to the evaluation of multimodal applications by using participatory design workshops. Our goal is to obtain user feedback for our design on a fundamental, conceptual level. We propose in this paper the use of design ideas coming from the users, not only by translating them one-to-one into design but also by analyzing them in order to reflect on the design concepts behind the artifacts being constructed. By providing examples of workshops conducted, we show a methodology that helps in exploring the design space and that has the potential of producing more interesting jumps inside the design space, towards more a satisfying user experience.”
Echtler, Florian and Klinker, Gudrun (2008): A multitouch software architecture. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 463-466. Available online
“In recent years, a large amount of software for multitouch interfaces with various degrees of similarity has been written. In order to improve interoperability, we aim to identify the common traits of these systems and present a layered software architecture which abstracts these similarities by defining common interfaces between successive layers. This provides developers with a unified view of the various types of multitouch hardware. Moreover, the layered architecture allows easy integration of existing software, as several alternative implementations for each layer can co-exist. Finally, we present our implementation of this architecture, consisting of hardware abstraction, calibration, event interpretation and widget layers.”
Følstad, Asbjørn (2008): The effect of group discussions in usability inspection: a pilot study. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 467-470. Available online
“How do group discussions affect the output of a usability inspection, as compared to individual evaluators only? This question was investigated in association with usability inspections of a music community website. Potential users of the website participated as evaluators in two usability inspection sessions. All evaluators made individual predictions prior to group discussions. Twenty-five percent of the usability issues generated in the group discussion were new, viz. not predicted by individual evaluators. Also, the group discussion served to discard or modify the majority of usability issues predicted by the individual evaluators. The discarded individual predictions were typically low severity.”
Hart, Jennefer, Ridley, Charlene, Taher, Faisal, Sas, Corina and Dix, Alan J. (2008): Exploring the facebook experience: a new approach to usability. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 471-474. Available online
“The focus of this paper is to explore social networking sites such as Facebook in order to understand their recent success and popularity. Recent developments within Web 2.0 have provided users with more freedom to create their own unique user experiences. The conflict between traditional usability methods and user experiences are addressed through carrying out a Heuristic Evaluation to assess how well Facebook complies with usability guidelines and by conducting a user study to unveil unique user experiences. The findings of this study calls for a more holistic method of evaluation that redefines usability to encompass the user experience in line with future technology.”
Heyer, Clint and Grønning, Ingeborg (2008): Cross-workplace perspectives: relating studies from hospitals to an oil and gas workplace. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 475-478. Available online
“This discussion paper highlights how two apparently contrasting professions -- an oil and gas refinery operator and a hospital nurse -- share similar properties in how they collaborate, communicate and use artifacts. We relate literature on the nursing and hospital contexts with observations and data from our own workplace study at a refinery in Norway. In doing so, we seek to provide an introduction to a context that is not often encountered in CSCW or CHI literature, through the lens of the more familiar hospital setting.”
Jørgensen, Anker Helms (2008): Taking stock of user interface history. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 479-482. Available online
“The user interface is coming of age and papers addressing UI history have appeared in fair amounts in the last 25 years. Most of them address particular aspects such as an innovative interface paradigm or the contribution of a visionary or a research lab. Contrasting this, papers addressing UI history at large have been sparse -- and they primarily address the predominant GUI and Web interface paradigms and their forerunners. However, a small spate of publications have appeared recently so we now have a reasonable number of papers. Hence this work-in-progress takes stock of the current history of user interfaces at large. The paper first describes a theoretical framework drawn from history. Next the paper analyses a selected sample of papers on UI history at large. The analysis shows that the current state-of-art is featured by three aspects: Firstly internalism, in that the papers address the technologies in their own right with little contextualization, secondly whiggism in that they largely address prevailing UI technologies, and thirdly history from above in that they focus on the great deeds of the visionaries. The paper then compares this state-of-art in UI history to the much more mature fields history of computing and history of technology. Based hereon, some speculations regarding the future of UI history are offered.”
Komninos, Andreas, Wallace, Robert and Barrie, Peter (2008): Mobile empathy: putting the mobile device in its user's shoes. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 483-486. Available online
“Discovering the user's current physiological state allows a mobile device to self-adapt its behavior in such a manner that the services it provides to the user are delivered using the optimal modalities for the current circumstances. Furthermore, interpretations of the user's physiological state might allow its translation into an emotional state and emotional context awareness, which can opens the door to a new range of pervasive personal services. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of making a mobile device aware of where it is being worn on a users' body. We also propose an algorithm to allow the mobile device to understand its user's current level of activity without the requirement for strategically positioned sensors. This type of context awareness may enable us to design better interruption and alerting strategies, as well as informing the intelligent choice of interaction modalities on behalf of the device.”
Komulainen, Jeppe, Takatalo, Jari, Lehtonen, Miikka and Nyman, Göte (2008): Psychologically structured approach to user experience in games. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 487-490. Available online
“User experience (UX) in digital games has recently become a common topic of research. Despite association between psychology and experiences is clear, results have often been inadequately explicated by using psychological terms. In this study we explore the variety of experiences (i.e. positive and negative) that are received from playing digital games. The main aim is to integrate gamers' descriptions of their UX to theoretical constructs in psychology to reach a more analytic approach to the topic. The results suggested that user experiences are versatile in nature but they consist of four major constructs: cognition, motivation, emotion and focused attention. In addition to the main findings, gender was related on how gaming was experienced. As a conclusion, this study offers a solid and empirical-based terminology for communicating about UX in games. Also, the results can be utilized in developing models and measurement tools for UX in games in future.”
Kristensson, Per Ola, Arnell, Olof, Björk, Annelie, Dahlbäck, Nils, Pennerup, Joackim, Prytz, Erik, Wikman, Johan and Åström, Niclas (2008): InfoTouch: an explorative multi-touch visualization interface for tagged photo collections. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 491-494. Available online
“We report on a design exploration into how a large multi-touch tabletop display can be used for information visualization. We designed an interface where users explored a tagged photo collection by bi-manual manipulation of the collections' tag cloud. User feedback showed that despite the availability of multi-touch most of the actual interactions were single-touch. However, some particular natural actions, such as grabbing the tag cloud and partitioning it into two parts, were often carried with both hands. Thus our user study indicates that multi-touch can act as a useful complementary interaction method in information visualization interfaces.”
Law, Effie Lai-Chong and Hvannberg, Ebba Thora (2008): Consolidating usability problems with novice evaluators. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 495-498. Available online
“The process of consolidating usability problems (UPs) is an integral part of usability evaluation involving multiple users/analysts. However, little is known about the mechanism of this process and its effects on evaluation outcomes, which presumably influence how developers redesign the system of interest. We conducted an exploratory research study with ten novice evaluators to examine how they performed when merging UPs in the individual and collaborative setting and how they drew consensus. Our findings indicate that collaborative merging causes the absolute number of UPs to deflate, and concomitantly the frequency of certain UP types as well as their severity ratings to inflate excessively. It can be attributed to the susceptibility of novice evaluators to persuasion in a negotiation setting, and thus they tended to aggregate UPs leniently. Such distorted UP attributes may mislead the prioritization of UPs for fixing and thus result in ineffective system redesign.”
Lehtimäki, Kirsti and Rajanti, Taina (2008): Documenting the ordinary: mobile digital photography as an agent of change in people's practices concerning storing and sharing of photography. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 499-502. Available online
“Our research looks at sharing and storing of digital photographs from the cultural-anthropological perspective of people's everyday practices. Our case study was conducted within the Celtic-funded project EnComPas http://encompas.org/, which studied possibilities of supporting the communication needs of communities, especially families and home. In a study conducted in Arabianranta, Helsinki, we first mapped families' practices of storing and sharing traditional photographs through semi-structured interviews; then studied the changes introduced by digital technology and especially mobile phone's camera technology through trials and renewed interviews. Notable was the developed practice of documenting ordinary life, and telling stories with images, confirmed by other research. Ordinary life is documented mostly with the immediate aim of strengthening communication within a family or a group. The sheer amount of images accumulated creates demands on photo-storing and -- sharing applications, which we still feel are not the focus of designers and developers: people want to tell stories with the pictures, and are not interested in complicated annotating, organizing or rating systems.”
Leitner, Michael, Wolkerstorfer, Peter and Tscheligi, Manfred (2008): How online communities support human values. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 503-506. Available online
“With our work we refer to value-sensitive and value-centered design approaches to answer the question "why" people join online communities. We conducted qualitative semi-structured Laddering interviews with 21 participants to identify relevant behavior motives for the use of online communities. We identified friendship, self-reflection and information purposes as the most relevant motives. Further, we demonstrate that in the users' experience online communities serve as information pools of social networks used for self-identification and self-reflection.”
Lin, Ming-Wei, Cheng, Yun-Maw and Yu, Wai (2008): Using tactons to provide navigation cues in pedestrian situations. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 507-510. Available online
“Until recently, the existing navigation services do not meet the needs in pedestrian situation. The display of present navigation information is often inappropriate. In this paper, we report two experiments to investigate whether using tactile display to present navigation information is sufficient and appropriate in pedestrian situation. The result of those experiments showed that Tactons could be a successful means of communicating navigation information in user interfaces in pedestrian situations.”
Lundgren, Sus (2008): Treating and teaching aesthetics as personality. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 511-514. Available online
“The environment changes direction fast Thinking like a pen flies Through the wall the headache is thrown My fear is created by you others I should have tasted freedom I call out This is not the anguished work of some angst-ridden young poet; instead it is the result of a conversation between a group of digital personalities, manifested as dolls trapped in an elevator, but also in graphics, in words and wording, in gestures and in relations and reactions. The system is called Physical Poets, and the creation of it was a workshop aiming at teaching interaction design students how to reason about, and make, aesthetic decisions. In this project, we taught one possible view on aesthetics, namely the view that when designing complex systems, it can sometimes help to assign a "personality" to the system in order to make all aspects of it merge together to an unified set of expressions and behaviors. By designing actual personalities -- the poets -- this concept was highlighted to the students, as were the issues with expressing these personalities and making sound aesthetical decisions fitting both their personalities and the system as a whole.”
Molin-Juustila, Tonja, Nuojua, Johanna and Kuutti, Kari (2008): Urban planning and ubicomp design: do we need to extend legally enforced participation?. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 515-518. Available online
“The paper attempts to open a discussion on user participation in the new situation, where information technology penetrates everyday and becomes part of our physical environment. Participation in the planning of built environment is legally enforced in urban planning, and the paper asks, if the participation in the design of ubicomp environments should be treated in a similar way.”
Naghsh, Amir M. and Roast, Chris R. (2008): Designing user interaction with robots swarms in emergency settings. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 519-522. Available online
“In this paper, we describe the development processes adopted for effective human centred design in the context of developing a human robot interface. The human robot interaction context is that of a working with a swarm of autonomous robots being developed to assist the process of search and rescue as carried out by fire fighters. The paper illustrates an approach to early design evaluation motivated by user centred design objectives. The conclusion from the study illustrates the value of early experiential feedback. In particular we show that the complex nature of professional practice in the high risk settings has significant influences upon the fitness for purpose.”
Niculescu, Andreea, White, George M., Lan, See Swee, Waloejo, Ratna Utari and Kawaguchi, Yoko (2008): Impact of English regional accents on user acceptance of voice user interfaces. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 523-526. Available online
“In this paper we present an experiment addressing a critical issue in Voice User Interface (VUI) design, namely whether the user acceptance can be improved by having recorded voice prompts imitate his/her regional dialect. The claim was tested within a project aiming to develop voice animated virtual help desk assistants for intelligent mobile phone interfaces. 64 subjects native Singaporeans participated in the experiment, ranking speech quality, politeness, dialogue easiness and trustworthiness for two virtual help desk assistants: one speaking with Singaporean accent, the other one speaking with British accent. Contrary to our expectation and despite the identical content of the information presented the British accented assistant was in all categories higher ranked than its Singaporean counterpart. This result is explained by other cultural and psychological biases that dominate the expected effect of common ethnic background. We concluded that subjective preference for a voice accent obviously affects users perception of other system features but design stereotypes like "similarity attracts" are rather context dependent.”
Olwal, Alex (2008): Unencumbered 3D interaction with see-through displays. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 527-530. Available online
“Augmented Reality (AR) systems that employ user-worn display and sensor technology can be problematic for certain applications as the technology might, for instance, be encumbering to the user or limit the deployment options of the system. Spatial AR systems instead use stationary displays that provide augmentation to an on-looking user. They could avoid issues with damage, breakage and wear, while enabling ubiquitous installations in unmanned environments, through protected display and sensing technology. Our contribution is an exploration of compatible interfaces for public AR environments. We investigate interactive technologies, such as touch, gesture and head tracking, which are specifically appropriate for spatial optical see-through displays. A prototype system for a digital museum display was implemented and evaluated. We present the feedback from domain experts, and the results from a qualitative user study of seven interfaces for public spatial optical see-through displays.”
Blythe, Mark, Robinson, John and Frohlich, David (2008): Interaction design and the critics: what to make of the "weegie. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 53-62. Available online
“This paper describes the development and evaluation of "weegie" an audio-photography desk featuring sounds and images inspired by the Govan area of Glasgow. It was intended to be an interactive artwork that would challenge negative preconceptions about the area. The paper describes two techniques used to consider the extent to which the piece achieved these aims. The first technique is the "personal meaning map" and taken from museum studies. The second is cultural critique drawn from the arts. Building on Gaver's [24] strategy of using cultural commentators for 'polyphonic' assessment it considers the extent to which perspectives drawn from the humanities and the arts can be useful in evaluating design. It argues that a more rigorous understanding of critical theory is necessary to the development of interaction design criticism.”
Kjeldsen, Malene Patsche and Matthews, Ben (2008): Talking about hearing: designing from users' problematisations. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 531-534. Available online
“In this paper, we present a set of design explorations that are intended to reify issues that we have discovered in the course of design research project concerning technologies for the hearing impaired. We briefly describe the field studies we conducted, and present some of the issues that were uncovered in our investigation of how hearing impaired persons problematise their hearing. From our data we developed concepts, the purpose of which was to make these issues visible and tangible. In this way we attempt to use design as a vehicle for realising issues, rather than as a means of necessarily addressing or solving them. The conceptualisation of the issues from the data contrasts with how hearing difficulties are typically problematised as an issue for technological solution.”
Rømen, Dagfinn and Svanaes, Dag (2008): Evaluating web site accessibility: validating the WAI guidelines through usability testing with disabled users. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 535-538. Available online
“The purpose of the reported study has been to validate empirically the usefulness of using the WAI accessibility guidelines WCAG 1.0 as a heuristic for website accessibility. Through controlled usability tests of two websites with disabled users (N=7) and a control group (N=6) we found that only 27% of the identified website accessibility problems could have been identified through the use of WCAG. We conclude from this that in its current version, the application of WCAG alone is not sufficient to guarantee website accessibility. WCAG has a large potential for improvement, and our data point to some problem areas that we suggest should be included. We recommend that future versions of accessibility guidelines should be based on empirical data and validated empirically.”
Saad-Sulonen, Joanna and Cabrera, Andrea Botero (2008): Setting up a public participation project using the urban mediator tool: a case of collaboration between designers and city planners. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 539-542. Available online
“The Urban Mediator software is a web-based framework for sharing, obtaining and gathering location-based information. This paper presents an overview of the possibilities and limitations of this system for end-user development and co-design. The issues are analyzed through the case study of a public citizen participation project that used the software and was set up in collaboration between designers from the University of Art and Design Helsinki, and planners from the City of Helsinki Planning Department, during spring 2008. The collaborative work between the design team and the city planners, as well as the flexible and extensible features of the Urban Mediator, enabled the setting up of a successful small scale urban planning participative project as well as the further development of the Urban Mediator system.”
Strachan, Steven and Murray-Smith, Roderick (2008): GeoPoke: rotational mechanical systems metaphor for embodied geosocial interaction. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 543-546. Available online
“Rotational dynamic system models can be used to enrich tightly-coupled, bearing-aware embodied control of movement-sensitive mobile devices and support a more bidirectional, negotiated style of interaction. A simulated rotational spring system is used to provide natural eyes-free feedback in both the audio and haptic channels in a geosocial mobile networking context.”
Svensson, Anders, Björk, Staffan and Åkesson, Karl-Petter (2008): Tangible handimation real-time animation with a sequencer-based tangible interface. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 547-550. Available online
“In this paper, we present the development of Tangible Handimation, a sequencer-inspired animation system for recording and playback of whole or individual parts of animations through direct manipulation and tangible interfaces. The development of the system from a keyboard and mouse set-up, Handimation, is described including a workshop with professionals. Users reported the system as enabling real-time performances and making the animation process more democratic, and based upon their input support for imminent feed-forward information was added to the design.”
Tomitsch, Martin, Schlögl, Richard, Grechenig, Thomas and Wimmer, Christoph (2008): Accessible real-world tagging through audio-tactile location markers. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 551-554. Available online
“Real-world tagging technologies, such as RFID or visual codes, have enabled new application scenarios that foster mobile interaction with the physical world. While the application scenarios are promising for many contexts, the technologies are currently lacking accessibility. Especially blind and visually impaired people are not able to interact with tags if they are not aware of their presence. We propose audio-tactile location markers as a remedy to this problem. An audible signal leads users to the tag, which can be identified through tactile exploration. Preliminary user studies with four blindfolded subjects using an initial prototype showed the applicability of using an audible signal for locating tags.”
Vanhala, Toni, Surakka, Veikko and Anttonen, Jenni (2008): Measuring bodily responses to virtual faces with a pressure sensitive chair. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 555-559. Available online
“The present aim was to study emotion related body movement responses using an unobtrusive measurement chair that is embedded with electromechanical film (EMFi) sensors. 30 participants viewed images of a male and a female computer agent while the magnitude and direction of body movements were measured. The facial expressions (i.e., frowning, neutral, smiling) and the size of the agents were varied. The results showed that participants leaned statistically significantly longer towards the agent when it displayed a frowning or a smiling expression as compared to a neutral expression. Also, their body movements were reduced while viewing the agents. The results suggest that the EMFi chair is a promising tool for detecting human activity related to social and emotional behaviour. In particular, the EMFi chair may support unobtrusive measurement of bodily responses in less strictly controlled contexts of human-computer interaction.”
Ståhl, Anna and Höök, Kristina (2008): Reflecting on the design process of the Affective Diary. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 559-564. Available online
“Affective Diary is a digital diary that makes use of bio-sensors to add some reminiscence of bodily experiences. The design process behind Affective Diary was 'sensitive' to three design qualities extracted from a previous project; providing cues of emotional expressivity building on familiarity, making the design open for personal expressivity and be aware of contradictions between modalities. Through the design process of Affective Diary, with frequent user involvements during the process, these design qualities became further tested, developed and refined. By providing a fairly detailed and reflected description of the design process behind Affective Diary, we aim to provide other designers with inspiration on several levels: both in terms of methods used, but also in why these three design qualities are important and how to realize them. Our aim is also to provide designers with knowledge in the form that makes sense to designers: the practical link between design qualities and final results.”
Hallnäs, Lars (2008): Design process: design rationale the Affective Diary. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 565-566. Available online
“This note is a critical review of some aspects of the design case presented in Reflecting on the Design Process of the Affective Diary, Proceedings of NordiCHI2008.”
Gislen, Ylva (2008): On the use of diaries. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. p. 567. Available online
“As a teenager I used to have an on-going discussion with one of my closest friend on the habit of keeping diaries. She did and I didn't, and to my defence against accusations of emotional sloppiness I usually ended up referring to the Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose (whom we both admired) who once wrote an essay against keeping diaries. He insists that the mere accounting of events and the daily reflections in the diary risk to halter and disregard the creative, selective and never-ending process of memory at work.”
Vallgårda, Anna (2008): PLANKS: a computational composite. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 569-574. Available online
“What is a computer in interactive architecture and smart materials? How can we articulate the computer in order to be in sync with the design space it populates in these contexts? The design experiment presented here entails creating a physical manifestation of a computational composite -- a concept used to articulate the computer as a material for design. The experiment is meant to explore part of the expressional landscape available through this material composite perspective. In the experiment, it is especially the computers ability to redefine established cause-and-effects between materials and their environments just as it is the computers ability to create a discrete dependence on contextual factors installing an explicit element of temporal form, which are explored.”
Pold, Søren (2008): Computational composites and/or interfaces?: a critical discussion of the design case "Planks: A Computational Composite. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 575-576. Available online
“This paper is a critical discussion of the design case "Planks: A Computational Composite" [1]”
Engholm, Ida (2008): Planks: a computational composite: a critique essay. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 577-578. Available online
“Historically, science and art are pursued on different terms and considered separate epistemological categories, but in the field of design, reality often creates a practical integration of the two. Design is science and art, and in the linking of scientific and artistic contributions under common views, their relations are clarified and made visible. The design case "Planks: A Computational Composite", which is included in the NordiCHI conference 2008, combines a scientific approach to design with a craft-oriented and artistically focused exploration. The case sets out to explore the computer as a unique material for design through a study of the expressive potentials of the material. The case defines the theoretical foundation for understanding computers as a design material by mapping the structure and surface of the machine. The study is based on a scientific analysis of computers and introduces an understanding of the mechanisms and potentials of digital computers, which are defined as "computational composites" (p. 2). Furthermore, the case describes a research-based experiment that combines computation with experiments in wood in an effort to challenge the normal responses of the material, and which uses computation to bring a more poetic dimension to the expression of the composite.”
Andersson, Monika and Nordmark, Maria (2008): Bringing the web to the shop floor. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 579-580. Available online
“As consumers expect multichannel integration, retailers need to adapt to meet these expectations. To this end, many retailers are implementing multichannel marketing strategies. (Forrester Research, Inc., 2008) The re-use of structure and content from an existing online shop as an in-store sales tool therefore becomes an attractive proposal. If done successfully, total sales will increase. The challenge is knowing what to keep, tweak, remove or add to ensure the customer experience is retained in-store. By using a combination of qualitative field studies backed up by quantitative data, we adapted the online shop of a large national Swedish sports retailer to an in-store electronic kiosk. In the process, we discovered that the website had to be adjusted to its new environment with regards to both functionality and design. The physical aspect of the kiosk added 'invitation to interaction' and 'reliability' to the list of crucial considerations. Our experience shows that it is possible to use an existing online shop as an in-store sales tool -- provided particulars of the socially and architecturally situated retail environment are taken into account.”
Combe, Emmanuelle, Posselt, Javier and Kemeny, Andras (2008): Virtual prototype visualization: a size perception study. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 581-582. Available online
“In this experiment, carried out at Renault, we studied size perception in virtual environments. We compared 1:1 scale perception of a cockpit through two different virtual reality systems: a Head Mounted Display (HMD), which can be used as virtual or augmented reality system, and a cylindrical screen vs. the physical 1:1 scale. We show that differences exist between size perception using the HMD, and using the cylindrical screen.”
Concejero, Pedro, Munuera, Jorge and Lorenz, Mirko (2008): The MESH mobile video annotation tool. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 583-584. Available online
“In this paper we describe the MESH Mobile Video Annotation tool, which provides a solution for a mobile user to make annotations of video files stored in his/her mobile device, using MESH ontology, in addition to free-text or manual annotations. This document presents a description of the technological platform chosen (Java in the mobile, or J2ME), a usage scenario of video annotation in the mobile and a detailed description of the user evaluation carried out.”
Großmann, Manuel (2008): Comba: customizing hardware as an approach towards universal design. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 585-586. Available online
“Digital products, especially mobile phones, often do not adapt to their operators and thus make their use a burden rather than a pleasure. In this paper I will present Comba, a tangible digital device that allows easy customization and therefore adapts to different user needs. Its functionality refers to a construction kit. The single elements are inspired by a honeycomb. So far, Comba is a design prototype.”
Jaensson, Tove and Voss, Annika (2008): Industrial experience: evaluating novel interaction styles. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 587-588. Available online
“A user study, with ten participants and three prototypes built on 3D-accelerometers in mobile phones was executed with Think Aloud method, Brainstorming sessions, and DV documentation. McCarthy&Wright's 'Four Threads of Experience' was used as a framework for analysis of the material. The methods were very well suited for the purpose of the project, and the results of the study is encouraging in further design and development of mobile services with new interaction styles.”
Luojus, Satu and Vilkki, Olli (2008): Development of user-driven research methods as the starting point for living lab activities. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 589-590. Available online
“The pedagogical starting point for developing instruction in digital media was to produce new competence. The outcome of the development work was a teaching model that follows the user-driven design process, with the aim of providing students with the ability to act as developers of product development and innovation processes in their fields. The study entity forms a dual innovation model comprised of: (1) a continuous method development test bed, and (2) the application of competence to the partnership network's R&D projects. The innovation environment User Driven Innovation Centre (UnIC) was created user-driven and Living Lab-based research methods. Our research and method competence is utilised in several R&D projects implemented with business and network partners.”
Lööv, Joakim (2008): Gate reviews and usability. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 591-592. Available online
“Most development processes are divided into phases. Often, to go from one phase to the next, the project must pass a gate review. Usability can be a gate review checklist item, by applying accepted procedures for subjective assessment. The measurement would give numerical estimates of the usability state of the different parts of the product, based on the level of evaluation performed, combined with the importance of each functional group.”
Stoll, Pia, Alfredsson, Fredrik and Lövemark, Sara (2008): Usability supporting architecture pattern for industry. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 593-594. Available online
“Traditionally software qualities as e.g. performance have been considered important to implement early in the software system architecture. The usability quality implementation has been done late or, if considered early in the software architecture, then often as a separation between presentation and execution layers. However there are usability concerns requiring early implementation in the software architecture not solved merely by separation. Usability supporting architecture patterns (USAPs) have been shown to provide developers with useful guidance for producing an architectural design that supports usability for these concerns, [1]. This experience report introduces the USAPs in an industrial context.”
Bratteberg, Ingunn and Kristoffersen, Steinar (2008): Irreversibility and forceback in public interfaces. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 63-72. Available online
“We are starting to see walk-up kiosks and self-service machines everywhere in the public space. Indeed, it seems to be increasingly prevalent that service providers offer technological aid to customers so that they can perform more of the work entailed for themselves. Buying train tickets, checking in luggage at the airport or paying duty for excess merchandise upon returning home from abroad are examples of such walk-up-and-use services. It is surprising how such "simple" systems are not perceived as user-friendly. We believe that designing information technology for the public space poses distinct conceptual challenges. Yet, this has not been systematically explored within our field. This paper is based on an ethnographic study of the purchase and validation of ticketless travel for an airport train. It argues that public IT needs an extended framework of usability principles, which goes beyond well-known interaction design guidelines.”
Choi, Jung-Min and Sato, Keiichi (2008): Interaction as learning process: incorporating domain knowledge into system use. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 73-82. Available online
“While users increasingly need to obtain more knowledge for operating systems, knowledge of the domain of concern has been hidden behind system operation which may not reflect the reality of practice in the domain. As users' experience in system use is limited to system operation procedures, they may not be able to learn how to manipulate domain knowledge in order to achieve satisfactory output using the system. This research aims to propose a methodology for supporting system designers in developing a system that can help users more actively expand and manipulate their domain knowledge through interaction. In this paper, first, the models of users' learning process in interaction are proposed. Then, the effects of users' operation and domain knowledge on their learning process are investigated through observational case studies. Finally, a methodological concept for manipulating users' learning process in system design is proposed and discussed in order to enhance the quality of interaction.”
Coleman, Graeme W., Macaulay, Catriona and Newell, Alan F. (2008): Sonic mapping: towards engaging the user in the design of sound for computerized artifacts. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 83-92. Available online
“This paper argues for new approaches to the design of sound for contemporary interactive technologies. We begin by presenting what we feel to be the key challenges as yet unaddressed by conventional auditory display research. Subsequently, we propose a user-centered, acoustic ecology-informed, design method that we feel can be built upon to inform the design of sound for contemporary interactive technologies, thus tackling some of the challenges introduced. Our approach consists of three stages: firstly, encouraging designers and users to experience the original auditory environment, identifying the key sounds within that environment, and then summarizing this information into an 'earwitness account' that can be used as a prelude for informing the design of sonically enhanced technologies that may be used within similar environments. By trialing this method with undergraduate interactive media design students, we identify the methodological challenges involved in attempting to engage people, who are not necessarily 'sound professionals', with their existing auditory environments. We highlight the opportunities that arise and pitfalls that should be avoided when attempting to introduce such approaches within real-world design studies.”
Dalsgaard, Peter, Dindler, Christian and Eriksson, Eva (2008): Designing for participation in public knowledge institutions. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 93-102. Available online
“We address the challenges facing designers of interactive technologies for public knowledge institutions such as museums, libraries and science centres. We argue that visitor participation is a key concern for these institutions and present a theoretical framework for understanding participation grounded in pragmatist philosophy. We then present design work carried out in three different settings, namely a museum, a combined aquarium and science centre, and a municipal library. Based on a discussion of these design cases, we offer six design considerations for designing for participation in public knowledge institutions.”
We have decided to give away world-class educational materials
because we believe that universal access to high quality education is key to the building
of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue.
To calculate just have much we have saved you, our wonderful readers, we compare our free encyclopedia to two
books we love:
As you are reading our encyclopedia on your iPad/tablet (and saving a few trees), we estimate that the price would be $90 if sold as an eBook.
With that number, we can calculate how much money we have saved our readers, based on calculating the number of readers.
How we calculate readership
Because of our online and tablet/iPad approach to publishing, we are able to precisely measure reading behaviour across hundreds of parameters in realtime: Anything from reading
speed, drop-off points in the text, reader demographics, and much more.
Based on our server logs and the Google Analytics API,
we calculate the number of readers as described in the calculation method below.
A reader is not the same as a simple pageview and a reader is not the same as a
website visitor (as described in our calculation method below).
We calculate readership for two types of readers:
Readers that have read our whole encyclopedia, much the same way you read a printed book
Readers that have reader an individual chapter
Calcalution method: How we define a reader
First we use the Google Analytics API to get a report of the number of unique human visitors to a chapter/page. Google runs its business on ads and thus completely relies on the ability to distinguish between a human visitor and an automated request. If not, you could earn millions on automating clicks on Google Ads.
We then compare that number to our Apache webserver logs, which report the much higher number of actual visits to a chapter/page (both human and automated). We calculate the difference in percent, which we call an "exaggeration factor", which we use in step 6 below.
With a large part of the visitors excluded, we further exclude any visitor who:
has not remained on the page for at least 3 minutes (this factor is calculated by recording visit durations of 1000 randomly selected visitors) or has not printed the page (i.e. has not visited the printerfriendly version of the chapter/page)
has not scrolled the page (this factor is calculated by recording scroll movements on 1000 randomly selected visitors)
We then further exclude "double readers", i.e. readers who read a portion of a chapter and then returns in,
say, a week or a month to read the rest.
Although this person's reading activity spans multiple server sessions, the person is only counted as a single reader.
We categorize a "double reader" as a visitor who:
visits a page, or multiple pages, across multiple server sessions
qualifies to be defined as a reader, cf step 1-3 above, in all server sessions
uses the same originating IP address
We then subtract 5% from the final number to counter-balance a last remaining factor, namely the situation where one reader reads a chapter on his/her tablet
using a WiFi connection (and counted as one reader) but then picks up his other tablet using a 3G dongle
(with another IP address) and re-reads some of the chapter. That will equal two readers, not one. We have no way
of calculating how many times this situation arises, but to be on the safe side we subtract 5%
from the final number.
We then take half of the "exaggeration factor" from step 2 and substract from the final number. We do this for no rational reason. We do it only as a further measure to be certain that our number of readers is not inflated.
To qualify as a reader who has read our whole encyclopedia - much the same way you read a printed book - that person must have qualified as a reader (cf. 1-6 above) of at least 80% of the encyclopedia chapters.
As a result, we have eliminated everything from automated requests to the more casual visitors. That leaves us with what we can safely call readers.
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Authoritative overview of End-User Development (EUD) including 4 HD video interviews filmed in Rome, Italy. EUD is really all about democratization of computing.
