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.
“This talk discusses how to strike a good balance between making the user an active co-constructor of system functionality versus making a too strong, interpretative design that does it all for the user. It is easy to fall into the trap of being insensitive to users as actors instead seeing them as passive users. It is equally easy to fall into a postmodernism trap where it is assumed that users will always appropriate technology in ways that are unexpected by the designer, and thus, basically the designer can abdicate.”
“Two mobile device text entry methods were evaluated. The well-known Multitap method was compared to our RollPad method on a new device utilizing a tactile touchpad in place of a keypad. RollPad was well liked by participants. KSPC (keystrokes per character) was significantly lower: 1.42 compared to 2.13 with Multitap. However, no significant difference was found in error rates or entry speed, with speed measured at about 7.3 wpm for both methods.”
“Quikwriting is a previously published technique for entering text into computers using a stylus. We report results of a longitudinal study on user performance with it. In addition to the original stylus-based usage mode we designed modes for joystick and keyboard thus making Quikwriting compatible with a wide range of computing devices. Twelve participants used the stylus and joystick modes in 20 sessions for a total of ten hours. By the end of the experiment their text entry rate was 16 wpm in the stylus mode and 13 wpm in the joystick mode. At the end we conducted a test to verify that Quikwriting skill transfers to the keyboard mode. Text entry rate for the first five minutes of use in the keyboard mode was 6 wpm. In summary, the stylus mode was not particularly fast, but we found Quikwriting suitable for multi-device use.”
“To promote inter-study comparability it is desirable to standardize experimental procedures in text entry experiments. This includes standardizing the language. The current trend is to use English. To clarify the implications of use of English in non-English speaking countries we measured text entry performance with a QWERTY keyboard for 16 participants transcribing phrases in two languages. The languages were Finnish - the first language of the participants - and English, in which the participants had considerable skill. English language entry was about 16% slower than Finnish. The participants also made more errors when transcribing English.”
“Interacting and navigating virtual environments usually requires a wired interface, game console, or keyboard. The advent of perceptual interface techniques allows a new option: the passive and untethered sensing of users' pose and gesture to allow them to maneuver through and manipulate virtual worlds. We describe new algorithms for interacting with 3-D environments using real-time articulated body tracking with standard cameras and personal computers. Our method is based on rigid stereo-motion estimation algorithms and can accurately track upper body pose in real-time. With our tracking system users can navigate virtual environments using 3-D gesture and body poses. We analyze the space of possible perceptual interface abstractions for full-body navigation, and present a prototype system based on these results. We finally describe an initial evaluation of our prototype system with users guiding avatars through a series of 3-D virtual game worlds.”
“Mission Queen Maud Land (MQML) is a collaborative virtual environment that was developed to explore new ways to stimulate secondary school pupils to collaborate in grasping complex subject matter. MQML is designed for five simultaneous users (four pupils and a teacher) and it combines a collaborative virtual environment with a web site and audio narratives. Basic concepts from molecular biology and genetic engineering form the educational core in MQML, and it enables the participants to explore the DNA molecule and to unravel the genetic code by interactions both on a macroscopic and a microscopic level. A background story was developed with the purpose of adding excitement and engagement to the subject matter. The audio narratives were used to convey the story while the web site provided the necessary background information. This paper describes our design approach for making the subject matter easy to understand, and for eliciting collaborative work processes among the participants. Finally, we report results from evaluations of MQML during a field study in the secondary school.”
“This case study examines a procurement project where the Swedish National Labor Market Administration (AMV) hired usability consultants in order to redesign their website for employment exchange. The user centered design process was part of a larger project to define how the website could be reorganized to better support new organizational goals. The project was managed by a procurement group that had already defined the organizational requirements for the website. They hired the usability consultants to learn about user requirements and to specify an information architecture and design. The usability company suggested a process with a user research phase and an iterative design phase. The primary deliverables would be personas and an evaluated prototype. The results demonstrate how the user centered design process can effectively be used by active procuring organizations as a bridge between abstract organizational requirements and concrete systems requirements. Tools such as personas and prototypes helped the procurers to understand and prioritize among requirements, as well as to communicate their work to the organization. These tools will be used in the continued work to specify and develop the system.”
“Previous research has sought to utilize everyday messaging metaphors, such as the notice board, in location-based messaging systems. Unfortunately, many of the restrictions associated with the metaphors have been unnecessarily reintroduced to interaction, and results from the previous field trials have been disheartening. InfoRadar builds on experiences with these systems by presenting improvements in user interface functionality and services. By providing a novel radar interface for accessing messages, desktop-like temporal storage for messages, location-independent message threading, filtering functionality, contextual audience addressing, multimedia messaging, social activity indicator, and voting, InfoRadar attempts to combine both public and in-group messaging into one system. A preliminary field trial indicates that location-based aspects may have a role in facilitating mobile communication, particularly when it comes to engaging in social interaction with unknown people.”
“In this paper we present a prototype instant messaging system that allows multiple simultaneous users to access their instant messaging whilst watching TV together in the same room.”
“This paper presents the results of a software usability study, involving both subjective and objective evaluation. It compares a popular XML data transformation language (XSLT) and a general purpose rule-based tree manipulation language which addresses some of the XML and XSLT limitations. The benefits of the evaluation study are discussed.”
“HCI is misdefined. We need to redefine it. HCI is misfocused. We need to refocus it. HCI has a window of opportunity to recreate itself as a design discipline. It must focus on the intention of gifted design, which is to improve the world by delivering new sources of value. A focus on value creates a paradoxical discipline that fuses subjectivity and objectivity in a single process. HCI must be objectively systematic and reliable in the pursuit of subjective value. Traditional disciplines have delivered truth. The goal of HCI is to deliver value. In my invited presentation, I will outline why we can and must change within HCI, where we are now (and how we got there), what I believe we should change to. I close with a research agenda for value-centred HCI.”
“In recent years, there has been growing interest in the ethnomethodological notion of accountability and discussion of how it can be used to understand technology use and inform design. This paper hopes to contribute to this ongoing discussion by exploring how local understandings of accountability affect technology use and how the introduction of new technologies in turn affects those local understandings of accountability. The paper explores this phenomenon by describing the introduction of a device into an intensive care unit. The appropriation and use of this device was affected by local understandings of accountability but the technology itself also created new means by which staff could demonstrate themselves as competent practitioners, thus creating new local understandings of accountability.”
“25 years ago co-operative design started out as a result of technological immersion in workplace settings. The cooperative design approach propagated how ideals as democracy, emancipation and quality were essential when designing technology for workplaces. Today, technology is spread into domestic and non-professional practices. Even though time has changed over the past 25 years, this paper argues for a revitalization of the 'Utopian' ideals when designing technology for everyday use. By addressing the original 'Utopian' ideals in the light of the new challenges for co-operative design, this paper voices the need for democracy, emancipation and quality when designing technology for non-professional use. The paper discusses the ideals in three current design projects.”
“This study was performed at the Clinic of Oral Medicine at Sahlgrenska university hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. The focus of the study was to create a better system for handling images of the oral mucosa. The main goal was to determine if multi-layer design is a good method for this purpose. An interview session was performed to get a solid knowledge base of the users skills and needs. Based on the interviews and the methodology for multi-layer design a prototype was created. Seven different layers were put together and the basic were listed. The prototype uses an existing data source for images and patient data. In the work with the prototype the method has proven to be very useful so far. To prove the methodology further, several evaluations have to be performed and the prototype needs to be more thoroughly tested.”
“For several years, virtual environments (VEs) are promising applications to explore and manipulate 3D data and 3D worlds. Those environments are designed to be intuitive and easy to use, however, in practice no ideal solution has been proposed yet. Designers and researchers always have to make compromises due to the complexity of the human senses and technical and financial restrictions. It is widely accepted that multisensory metaphors dramatically can improve the user's performance when interaction in a VE. In this paper, we present a modelling application, for research purposes, called nVRment, which uses and combines several interaction metaphors. The aim of this application is to test in practice our newly proposed metaphors: the "Object In Hand" metaphor, which uses proprioception together with force feedback for manipulations and the "Small Scene Manipulation" which is suitable for manipulation of an object in its local context.”
“This paper studies gesture and speech controlled video for sports training. The goal is to combine the benefits of recording your performance with video equipment and training with a mirror. For example, a delayed camera view projected on a screen can be used to repeatedly perform and evaluate a spin kick, a move that is difficult to practice with a mirror. A video mirror can also be augmented with speech or gesture control for playback, recording and inspecting of individual frames. Three different interface design approaches are evaluated, based on testing with eight users that practice martial arts and acrobatics. The results suggest that an interactive video mirror can be highly useful in martial arts and other sports. The paper also introduces new kind of graphical controls that float around the user so that they can be manipulated with gestures regardless of the user's position.”
“In eye typing systems, a dwell time that adjusts to the user's natural typing speed is highly desirable. We present an algorithm for on-line adjustment of dwell time developed after detailed analysis of exit time upon selection of virtual keys. Exit time was measured using a wide range of dwell times for key selection (300-1100 ms). The results suggest that there was considerable variability in exit time among users indicating the need for calibration of the algorithm. The algorithm was evaluated in a user study and proved to be efficient. We also discuss the shortcomings of the current algorithm's implementation.”
“Poor usability in interactive systems/products is still a major problem for users and buyers, despite efforts made by an increasing number of usability professionals. How come this is so and what are the main obstacles to usability work? In this paper we report the results of a survey of usability professionals in Sweden, conducted in 2003. The survey identified, e.g. their background and experiences, the type of employment, organization, and products/systems, the software development process being used and some key success factors for usability work. The results indicate, among other things, that management support and project management support are essential for the usability worker. Moreover, they face problems such as, usability and user involvement having low priority in the projects.”
“The deployment of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) methods and processes in e-Government development projects requires knowledge of how user involvement is actually conducted in these projects today. In order to generate such knowledge, an interview survey of Norwegian e-Government project leaders has been conducted. It was found that user involvement is regarded as important by e-Government project leaders, but actual user involvement is often conducted according to the participation practice of industrial democracy rather than the processes and methods advocated within the traditions of HCI. The most frequently deployed user involvement activity is user representation in project terms. Users employed by the government units responsible for the project are more often involved in the development process, and in earlier project phases. The majority of the e-Government projects did not include activities to ensure Universal Design. Studies published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the British Government indicate that the results of the present investigation may be generalized to other European countries. It is concluded that the current practice of e-Government development will benefit on the systematic introduction of HCI methods. Further work should focus on the integration of HCI methods with the user involvement practice of industrial democracy.”
“This paper describes a user-centered concept development process especially suitable for emerging technologies. The process consists of four phases: 1) Definition of development goals, 2) User and technology research, 3) Iterative concept development and 4) Process wrap-up. Our variation of concept development process differs from prior ones by having a stronger emphasis on technology framework surrounding the concept development. The findings are gathered from 16 cases during the last three years in research projects and post-graduate courses.”
“This paper describes the results of an empirical study consisting of five sessions where scenarios are written by two writers working in unison, for instance a usability specialist and a software developer, making it possible for them to explore and reach a common understanding of requirements and design ideas. The study demonstrates that it is possible to produce scenarios through Pair Writing and it gives examples of how two writers can inspire, adjust and learn from each other through Pair Writing.”
“In this paper we discuss the re-orientation of human-computer interaction as an aesthetic field. We argue that mainstream approaches lack of general openness and ability to assess experience aspects of interaction, but that this can indeed be remedied. We introduce the concept of interface criticism as a way to turn the conceptual re-orientation into handles for practical design, and we present and discuss an interface criticism guide.”
“When designing a usability evaluation, key decisions must be made regarding methods and techniques for data collection and analysis. Although there is a strong body of research within human-computer interaction regarding the appropriate choices of data collection methods and techniques much less research has been conducted examining and comparing methods and techniques for analyzing the collected data. This paper presents a data analysis technique which allows usability evaluations to be conducted, analyzed and documented in a day; Instant Data Analysis (IDA). The use of this technique is exemplified through a usability evaluation of a software product for a large hospital for which traditional video data analysis and Instant Data Analysis were applied independently through a controlled experiment. Among our key findings, the experiment revealed that in only 10% of the time required to do the video data analysis, Instant Data Analysis identified 85% of the critical usability problems in the system being evaluated. At the same time, the noise of unique usability problems usually characterizing video data analysis was significantly reduced.”
“Effectiveness of Heuristic Evaluation (HE) has severely been challenged. The present study investigated two strategies for improving the effectiveness of HE: Selection of usability guidelines (Gerhardt-Powals' cognitive engineering principles vs. Nielsen's heuristics); Provision of support and training. We also examined various strategies for estimating the effectiveness of HE. An empirical study with a balanced within- and between subject 2x2 factorial design involving 18 novice evaluators was conducted. 290 non-consolidated usability problems (UPs) identified in 35 HE test sessions were evaluated against 88 actual UPs found in the user tests (n = 17) performed earlier. Nielsen's heuristics were proved to be more effective in enabling the evaluators to uncover significantly more UPs, though in general the effectiveness of HE was low. Implications for future work are drawn.”
“Based on activity theory an expert review method, the activity walkthrough, is introduced. The method is a modified version of the cognitive walkthrough, and is aimed to systematically include the context and history of use.”
“Technology is being developed at a rapid rate such that a large proportion of the population are finding it impossible to utilize the full functionality of products. In an integrated home environment, it is vital that technology products are not only desirable but also accessible to the whole population in terms of functionality and usability. This work-in-progress paper presents the findings from the first phase of a project investigating smart user interfaces (SUIs) in the context of an integrated home environment. To gather the requirements for universal access, eight workshops were conducted focussing on the needs, attitudes and expectations of people towards smart homes. This will contribute to the development of user led design criteria for the development of a prototype universal SUI.”
“In this paper we discuss recent developments in interaction design principles for ubiquitous computing environments, specifically implications related to situated and mobile aspects of work. We present 'Interaction through Negotiation' as a general Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) paradigm, aimed at ubiquitous/pervasive technology and environments, with focus on facilitating negotiation in and between webs of different artifacts, humans and places. This approach is concerned with the way technology presents itself to us, both as physical entities and as conceptual entities, as well as the relations between these presentations, as we move between different work settings and tasks. It incorporates a much-needed focus on availability, interpretability and connectivity as fundamental for understanding and supporting HCI in relation to single devices as well as complex constellations of them. Based on several extensive empirical case studies, as well as co-operative design-sessions, we present a reflective analysis providing insights into results of the "Interaction through Negotiation" design approach in action. A very promising area of application is exception handling in pervasive computing environments.”
“This paper describes how computer-human interaction in ambient computing environments can be best informed by conceptualizing of such environments as problem solving systems. Typically, such systems comprise multiple human and technological agents that meet the demands imposed by problem constraints through dynamic collaboration. A key assertion is that the design of ambient computing environments towards efficacious human-machine collaboration can benefit from an understanding of competence models of human-human and animal-animal collaboration. Consequently, design principles for such environments are derived from a review of competent collaboration in human groups, such as sport teams, and animal groups, such as wolf packs.”
“Time-compressed audio replay is a very useful feature for skimming speech data. However, common user interfaces for this task usually lack the flexibility and interactivity known from interfaces for visual data browsing. In this paper, we introduce a new interface design which enhances and complements existing approaches for speech skimming. By combining time-compressed audio replay with the concept of elastic interfaces, we make speech skimming more similar to navigation in visual documents and thus, particular useful for highly interactive tasks such as review or search for information.”
“This paper describes a study of the auditory environment in a chemical factory and how a group of process operators ascribe meaning to a selection of sound clips from their daily work environment. It is shown that the richness of the auditory environment is a crucial aspect of the distributed work environment. We argue that a phenomenological approach for soundscape studies in relation to HCI is needed to understand auditory interfaces for cooperative environments. One way of doing this is to search in existing work practices, explore how already present sounds are used and to let this knowledge inform the design of new useful auditory environments. Three aspects regarding the meaning of the factory sound events are put forward; how the operators use sound for identifying things and places, notification about status of surrounding artifacts and for maintaining social awareness.”
“Interactive products have definitely improved from the users' perspective in the 20 years since the HCI field emerged. Prior to the 1980s, only a small portion of the population of the western world used computers, primarily scientists, engineers, and financial analysts. Today, almost everyone in developed nations use dozens of computers each day: withdrawing money from the bank, checking out at the grocery store, speed-dialing the cell phone, surfing the web, email to grandmother, and IMing friends to set up an impromptu social event. Interactivity with computers has progressed from command-line operating systems accessible only to gurus to almost invisible operating systems which require almost no attention, from esoteric applications whose functionality was desired by only a few, to depending on computer functionality for almost every aspect of life. The fact that people can and do live in such tight integration with interactive systems is a testament to HCI's contribution to the world. We can declare victory!”
“It is widely accepted that users should be involved in the interactive systems development. However, involving the users is often difficult and quite rare in software development organizations, especially in the product development context. We took a culturally oriented approach in the analysis of the position of user involvement in two software development organizations operating in the product development context. We analyzed how user involvement is modified and interpreted in the cultural context. This meaning negotiation - enculturation - process was the focus of empirical examination. Empirical material was gathered and analyzed by employing an interpretive research approach. The results suggest that there exist clear differences in how user involvement, has been encultured in the case organizations. The case organizations employ different approaches to user involvement, and differing strategies for the facilitation of user involvement. As an implication for practice, we emphasize the importance of understanding the cultural context in which the user involvement is to be initiated, and suggest that different approaches to user involvement might be selected in differing cultural settings.”
“It is critical to the success of a system that appropriate and representative users are involved in the development work. However, the process of identifying and selecting users has not been a focus of research. In this paper, we describe a process of identifying and selecting relevant users specifically for field studies. Characterization and sampling of users are discussed. In addition, a way of describing user groups is suggested. Finally, we summarize results from seven case studies in six different companies. The case studies show that developers tend to underestimate the diversity of users and that a systematic process helps to identify the different user groups, select representative users and identify representative user needs. It was found that identification of users' characteristics and groups is an iterative process, and user descriptions evolve when real data are gathered from users.”
“Inspection techniques are widely used during systems design as a supplement to empirical evaluations of usability. Psychology-based inspection techniques could give important insights into how thinking shapes interaction, yet most inspection techniques do not explicitly consider users' thinking. We present an experiment comparing two psychology-based inspection techniques, cognitive walkthrough (CW) and metaphors of human thinking (MOT). Twenty participants evaluated web sites for e-commerce while keeping diaries of insights and problems experienced with the techniques. Using MOT, participants identified 30% more usability problems and in a reference collection of problems achieved a broader coverage. Participants preferred using the metaphors, finding them broader in scope. An analysis of the diaries shows that participants find it hard to understand MOT, while CW limits the scope of their search for usability problems. Participants identified problems in many ways, not only through the techniques, reflecting large differences in individual working styles.”
“People with cognitive disabilities benefit from new computerized tools for maintaining social contacts. Their need for easy-to-use applications has been established. However, there is little research on improving usability evaluation methods with this user group. We conducted a case study with a group of users with cognitive disabilities. Pilot test findings indicated that a think aloud test would not work well with this user group. Therefore, instead of a conventional usability test, we conducted an informal walkthrough, in addition to classroom observation and interviews. Our study shows a need to collect data with several complementary methods, and to adjust the methods to suit the characteristics of the participants. Without observational methods, many usability problems would have been missed. Furthermore, the special characteristics of this user group have to be taken into account also in expert evaluation.”
“Two studies on how to support communication between grandparents and grandchildren are presented. The first study, an interview with 12 parents, investigates the conversation between grandparents and grandchildren in face-to-face and phone situations. The results of the study suggest that in the face-to-face situation conversation is closely tied to the concurrent activity. The phone does not support this kind of conversation. This might explain why the calls are short and infrequent. In the second study, alternative communication technologies are studied using a focus group. Two of them aimed at sharing a context for conversation. They were well received. The technology that supports always-on connection was objected due to privacy concerns.”
“Many failures in long-term collaboration occur because of a lack of activity awareness. Activity awareness is a broad concept that involves awareness of synchronous and asynchronous interactions over extended time periods. We describe a procedure to evaluate activity awareness and collaborative activities in a controlled setting. The activities used are modeled on real-world collaborations documented earlier in a field study. We developed an experimental method to study these activity awareness problems in the laboratory. Participants worked on a simulated long-term project in the laboratory over multiple experimental sessions with a confederate, who partially scripted activities and probes. We present evidence showing that this method represents a valid model of real collaboration, based on participants' active engagement, lively negotiation, and awareness difficulties. We found that having the ability to define, reproduce, and systematically manipulate collaborative situations allowed us to assess the effect of realistic conditions on activity awareness in remote collaboration.”
“This paper investigates and evaluates some of the procedural aspects of intense collaborative activities. It reports on a study where orchestrated procedural support and guidance assisted presenters in a series of research review sessions. Applications were invoked automatically on behalf of the presenters and an awareness mechanism steered each session and helped speakers stay within their time frames. These orchestration activities were initially undertaken by an observer, but over a series of eight sessions, a software apparatus was built and took responsibility for carrying out the tasks.”
“Biometric methods are used for recognition and verification of the identity of a person in many applications. Certain concerns over the obtrusive nature of their use, threats to privacy and even the danger of identity theft are rising. In this paper unobtrusive and privacy preserving light biometrics, such as height, weight, and body fat percentage are suggested for user identification. An experiment with 62 test subjects was conducted. In verification type of application total error rate of 11% was achieved using weight data alone and”
“In light of recent attempts to design location-based mobile services, we present findings from a study of the ways in which positioning is done in everyday talk over the mobile phone. We show that a location is more than a coordinate on a map, and give examples of how people formulate location in a number of different ways according to the particulars of the activity. Based on these findings, we argue that rather than delivering location information in the form of geographical coordinates, location-based services should describe location in ways relevant to the users, thereby supporting the existing positioning practice.”
“This paper reports on a study which compared two tools for tracking the focus of visual attention - a remote eye tracker and the Restricted Focus Viewer (RFV). The RFV tool blurs the stimuli in order to simulate human vision; the user controls the portion of the screen which is in focus with a computer mouse. Both tools were used by eighteen participants debugging three Java programs for ten minutes each. The results in terms of debugging accuracy and debugging behavior were compared using the restricting view condition of the RFV and a measuring tool as factors. The results show that while the debugging performance and the distribution of the time spent on areas of interest (AOI) are not influenced by the restricting view condition, the dynamics of programming behavior is different. The number of switches between the AOIs as measured by the RFV significantly differed from those measured by the eye tracker. Also the number of switches under the restricted and unrestricted RFV condition was significantly different. We maintain that the RFV must be used with caution to measure the switches of visual attention.”
“The aim of the study is to find out whether subjective image quality evaluations can be quantified by eye movement tracking. We want to map objective or physically measurable image quality to subjective evaluations and eye movement data. Results show that eye movement parameters consistently change according to the instructions given to the user, and according to physical image quality. These results indicate that eye movement tracking could be used to differentiate image quality evaluation strategies that the users have. Results also show that eye movements would help mapping between technological and subjective image quality. We also propose to extend the widely used image quality process model, the Image Quality Circle. We suggest adding the objective measurements of a viewer (e.g. eye tracking) in parallel with customer perceptions as an option to gather information of customer perceptions of image quality.”
“We investigated the emotional response patterns and sense of presence elicited by video games with different characteristics (i.e., Tetris, Super Monkey Ball 2, Monkey Bowling 2, and James Bond 007: NightFire) among 37 undergraduates. We also examined the moderating influence of the sensation seeking and self-forgetfulness traits on the responses. Participants self-reported their emotional responses, defined in terms of joy, pleasant relaxation, anger, fear, and depressed feeling, and sense of presence. The results showed that games with different characteristics elicit differential emotional response patterns, and the engagement elicited by the games varies as a function of the Sensation Seeking trait of the player. Measuring emotional response patterns may have practical implications for game design, given that they give information on the game characteristics that maximize entertainment and pleasure, and may potentially be used in pre-testing different versions of the games.”
“This paper describes the effect of attitudes to new technology on user experience in two different digital games. User experience is measured by using a framework which includes perceptual-attentive, cognitive-emotional and motivational constructs. They form four experiential dimensions; Physical presence, Emotional involvement, Situational involvement and Performance competence. Attitudes to new technology were measured by asking from the subjects how interested in new technology they were. Two types of computer games were played in two different displays. The results show the dependence of experiential dimensions on subjects attitudes towards new technology. Attitudes to new technology modify the expectations and beliefs, hence the motivation of the user. The results have relevance especially when considering the optimal target group of marketing computer games.”
“The aim of this study was to investigate, if the simulated proximity level of an anthropomorphic conversational agent and the affective contents in the agent's speech influence the subjects' affective experiences. Eight subjects were exposed to messages given by the agent using synthetic speech. The agent character's simulated proximity level (intimate, personal, social, and public) and the affective contents of the speech message (negative, neutral, and positive) were systematically varied in the experiment. The proximity levels were simulated by displaying the agent on a screen in different sizes. After each speech message, the subjects rated their affective experience on four scales: valence, arousal, dominance, and message intimacy. They also chose a preferred agent proximity level. The results showed that by manipulating the agent's simulated proximity level, experienced dominance could be significantly influenced. Further, by manipulating the affective contents of the speech, experienced valence and intimacy could be significantly influenced. The personal and social proximity levels were preferred by the subjects.”
“Mobile devices and their novel applications are handling increasing amounts of new type of content such as video, images, messages and music. Managing large amounts of data introduces a usability challenge that cannot be solved without developing new ways of managing the content. The use of context metadata is presented here as one of the ways to aid content management. This paper investigates the usability issues that are introduced by the usage of context metadata such as time, date, location and proximity. The research was based on literature, expert groups, focus groups and interviews. The usability issues that were identified were related to meaningfulness, to usefulness and to privacy. A vast amount of issues need to be solved to implement a safe, easy-to-use and preferably automated way of assisting users to manage their mobile content with context metadata.”
“Speed, accuracy, and subjective satisfaction are the most common measures for evaluating the usability of search user interfaces. However, these measures do not facilitate comparisons optimally and they leave some important aspects of search user interfaces uncovered. We propose new, proportional measures to supplement the current ones. Search speed is a normalized measure for the speed of a search user interface expressed in answers per minute. Qualified search speed reveals the trade-off between speed and accuracy while immediate search accuracy addresses the need to measure success in typical web search behavior where only the first few results are interesting. The proposed measures are evaluated by applying them to raw data from two studies and comparing them to earlier measures. The evaluations indicate that they have desirable features.”
“This paper reflects on a small user study conducted to learn about diversity of meanings, values and experiences people associate with different kinds of contemporary domestic technology. The general goal was to inform a research project's early stages about challenges when designing novel technology for the sensitive home environment. By adapting a cultural probes approach participants were given the self-documentation packages with the tasks concerning the various angles of domestic life. Through the tasks the idea was to get the participants more aware of their domestic surroundings and of sense-making related to use and display of domestic objects. One assignment was to think of the home as a zoo and of the domestic objects as animals by attaching animal stickers to represent objects. Analysis of the reasoning behind the animal choices brought out five categories: appearance, activity, association, experience, and emotion.”
“Eyegaze is one of an alternative input methods. Nowadays, the videoculography (VOG) is the most suitable for this purpose. Eye pupil center position is necessary for evaluation of gaze direction. The novel pupil center co-ordinates extraction method was proposed. The method exploits averaging of pupil edge co-ordinates in the same scan line. Obtained points are approximated by line. Pupil center is estimated as intersection of vertical and horizontal lines. Accuracy of method was tested using synthetic eye images. The novel method accuracy is similar to one of approximation by circle method, when an eye is looking straight a head. The proposed method has better computational effectiveness and smaller errors in tertiary eye positions. Errors for both methods increase versus noise standard deviation with the same slope. However the influence of noise is small, if region between iris and pupil is sharp.”
“This paper focuses on presenting a technological framework for supporting knowledge sharing in organizations through computer support. The framework is based on the results from three studies of organizational knowledge in three kinds of settings and focuses on communication between people, awareness information about people's activities and availability, and information management. The third study also included an evaluation of a number of prototypes developed based on the three areas focused on in the framework. The results from the evaluation indicate that the framework is suitable for the purpose of supporting knowledge exchange.”
“Systems development is replete with projects that represent substantial resource investments but result in systems that fail to meet users' needs. Evidence-based development is an emerging idea intended to provide means for managing customer-vendor relationships and working systematically toward meeting customer needs. We are suggesting that the effects of the use of a system should play a prominent role in the contractual definition of IT projects and that contract fulfilment should be determined on the basis of evidence of these effects. Based on two ongoing studies of home-care management and electronic patient records for diabetes patients, this paper reports research in progress regarding the prospects and pitfalls of evidence-based development.”
“This paper presents a prototype implementation of a physically interactive fitness game called Shadow Boxer. The game is controlled by body movements and it utilizes a web camera to detect the player's movements. A user study was conducted to study the playability and the effectiveness of the game as an exercising method. The results showed that playing the game significantly increased the participants' heart rate and for most of the participants, the heart rate was at the optimal exercise level after playing the game. Thus, the game can be effectively used as an exercise method. Generally, the participants enjoyed playing the game and thought of it as a possible method for training. Additionally, the study revealed ideas for improving the game experience and the usability of the interface.”
“The fields HCI/usability and computer games have existed for a few decades with virtually no mutual interaction. However, in recent years, a number of exchanges have appeared, both in academia and in practice. This paper presents a preliminary account of this development. Exchanges in both directions seem viable: evaluation methods from HCI/usability towards games and interaction techniques and supporting user communication from games towards HCI/usability. The paper concludes with a discussion of the differences and similarities between the two fields.”
“We examined the moderating effects of habitual use of media (i.e., reading news-and tabloid papers [textual], and watching/listening to TV, videos, or DVDs [multimodal]) and gender on memory retrieval of emotionally classified words in congruent, incongruent, and no-sound conditions among 27 subjects. Significant interactions between media use and gender/emotional tone of the stimuli were found. For example, male participants and those who spend less time in watching/listening TV, videos, or DVDs remembered better high-valenced and high-dominant words than low-valenced and low-dominant words. The results are discussed in terms of implications for the personalization of digital information for users.”
“SnapTable, is a human friendly digital document handling system with the function of instant image copying on a photo-addressable electronic paper (E-Paper). By using Snaptable, an intangible optical image on the tabletop screen is able to be instantly transformed into a tangible printed image on a physical E-paper medium. SnapTable is also able to put link data, such as original document file location in the computer, on a built in wireless IC tag of E-paper medium. Therefore, when the E-Paper medium, with copied image and link data, is put on a wireless IC reader installed in the SnapTable, linked digital document file is easily called back on the tabletop screen and can be read or electrically manipulated again. Namely SnapTable realizes an interactive and seamless document handling environment between the real world and the digital world. In this paper, we describe the design concept of the SnapTable, hardware construction of prototype model, primitive application software, and assumptive use scenes of the SnapTable.”
“This paper presents the vision of the Hyperfloor, a local positioning system offering the possibility of local positioning of staff, personnel, visitors, patients and equipment in a hospital environment. The HyperFloor vision is based on camera recognition of floor patterns with a correspondence through wireless networks to a database. The HyperFloor offers a robust supplement to other local positioning systems and can be used by networked camera based devices used by patients or brought by visitors.”
“If interactive computer media is engaging and immersive, it may trigger similar feelings that people experience when they, for example, are wandering in nature, participating in high-risk sports or listening music. These experiences have been often characterized by words like 'transcendence', 'peak experience' and 'spiritual experience'. We conducted an experimental study in which the participants rated their feelings of transcendence after browsing and navigating through a hypertext or watching a film. The results showed that different types of media stimuli elicited different degrees of transcendence. It also seemed to be that the more immersive the stimulus was the higher the sense of transcendence the participants experienced. Both individual characteristics of users (i.e., the ability to focus on enjoyable activities) and properties of media stimuli (i.e., sensory engagement, sensory fidelity and interactivity) seemed to contribute to rated transcendence.”
“Pervasive games are new type of digital games, which combine game reality and physical reality within the gameplay. This novel game type presents new kinds of research and design challenges. In this paper we describe a location aware mixed reality game called The Songs of North, which was designed to demonstrate possible technical and game design solutions for pervasive games. We gathered the players' input as early as possible, and therefore did first a scenario study on gameplay. Its results were then formulated as requirements for design. One of the main findings was that utilizing user requirements and overcoming technical limitations in actual design process is a hard challenge and requires creativity.”
“In this paper, we propose to provide interactive applications designers with an approach that enhances the notion of Genre through design process, evaluation and acceptation of interactive applications. We firstly present a brief introduction of the Genre dimension. Then, we propose a Genre-based taxonomy of interactive applications, a model of Genre, a catalogue of patterns and a Genre-based chart as potential artefacts that enable consideration of Genre through design process. Finally, we expose the contribution of Genre in evaluation and acceptation processes.”
“In this paper we describe a two-part study that was used to establish the requirements for an interactive museum environment for children aged between 5 and 10. The paper outlines how the low-tech interactive environment currently used in the museum was used to produce ideas for a technology-enhanced environment.”
“It is often difficult for users to specify requirements on interactivity in multimedia products. These properties are often designed by designers or software engineers and the users run the risk of playing a passive role having low influence on important decisions made. This paper presents an attempt to improve the interactive design process by using graphical Wizard-of-Oz prototyping. The study shows that graphical Wizard-of-Oz prototyping allow co-operative design and test of computer interaction early in the design process ahead of traditional programming. It also demonstrates that this type of prototyping can promote collaboration and constructive dialogue between users and designers, thus strengthening the user as a stakeholder in the development process.”
“Recent technological advances have made it easier to communicate over distance and time. However, most of these technologies were initially designed for one-to-one communication, which makes them hard to use for group communication. Creating and maintaining shared lists of contacts is hard. Using these lists with different applications is usually impossible due to incompatibilities between them. In this paper, we present Circa, a software infrastructure that was designed to help people communicate with small groups of people such as close friends, colleagues or relatives.”
“This paper describes a new digital user study tool called Mobile Probes. Mobile Probes arose from a need to develop contextual and dynamic self-documenting tools for studying people's actions in mobile contexts. The technology used in the pilot study was based on dual band mobile phones with GPRS connections and an external accessory digital camera. A system was also developed for sharing and sorting the data. The system was implemented with Java software to enable the device to send and receive data, and PHP scripting to send and edit the questions and to view the answers through a dynamic web server. Another pilot study was conducted with a flexible platform that operates a spatio-temporal mobile log. The results of the studies show that Mobile Probes are a promising way to conduct user studies. Ideas for future development of the tool are discussed.”
“One vision of a context-aware pervasive networking environment promises the user a seamless access to surrounding services using her personal mobile device. This requires that the user interface of a service application has to be separated from the application logic and adapted to whatever type of mobile device the user is using to access it. The problem the user interface software developer faces is not only how to manage the heterogeneous platforms and different capabilities of users' devices, but also how to initiate the process of user interface adaptation. This paper proposes a reference model architecture to facilitate the development of adaptable user interfaces in a context-aware pervasive networking environment (Capnet). The initiation of adaptation process is facilitated by introducing the Capnet User Interface component, which acts as a user interface front-end to a mobile device. The component provides the user interface software developer several optional ways to generate the remote user interface using HTML or WML, Java or an XML-based scripting language. Thus, the model enables the use of existing Web-based user interface solutions as well as the creation of new ones that better meet the adaptivity and context-awareness requirements inherent in such an environment.”
“In speech interfaces users must be aware what can be done with the system - in other words, the system must provide information to help the users to know what to say. We have addressed this challenge by using adaptive techniques that support the learning and use of speech applications. We describe how adaptivity can be supported on architectural level, how user modeling can help to make the interface more adaptive, how integrated tutoring teaches the users to use speech applications and how context adaptive universal commands support cross domain learning. Specific issues concerning e-mail domain are discussed and examples from a working speech-based e-mail application are given.”
“This paper presents a novel concept to provide awareness of a virtual team's social activities and its self representation, based on a collaborative storytelling approach. Utilizing shared workspaces, team members can create, annotate, share, and discuss stories. A story consists of a sorted collection of annotated photos similar to comics. Users can rearrange stories manually or with the help of a storytelling algorithm that is based on drama arcs. We believe that this approach offers a compelling and entertaining way to provide team awareness and to support team coherence in virtual teams.”
“A novel calculator, ideal for interactive whiteboards and pen-based devices, is introduced and evaluated. The calculator provides a natural, dynamic method of entering conventional expressions by handwriting and provides continual feedback showing the calculation and results. The user interface adjusts and copes with partial expressions, morphing the expressions to correct position and syntax. Gestures are also used to edit and manipulate calculations. The user interface is declarative, in that all displays, even with partial user input, are of correct calculations. The new calculator is faster for more complex expressions and importantly, gives users more confidence in its use. The majority of users said that they would prefer to use this calculator rather than their conventional calculator.”
“The primary contribution of this paper is investigating how the User Centered Design approach is integrated into the industry. Employing a structured web-survey, targeted to the usability practitioners, we find out that UCD is particularly employed in big companies, but with a relatively low ratio: practitioners represent less than one percent of the company employees. User interviews and both low and high fidelity prototyping are the most frequently used techniques. We eventually validate our hypothesis that UCD integration is facilitated by factors related to management support, infrastructure and communication; companies interested in producing better usable and fit-for-use products should take all of these issues into serious consideration.”
“The BRIDGE awareness workspace is a synchronous collaborative tool supporting activity awareness for long-term (weeks/months) group projects. This workspace features integrated timeline and concept map views of the same document space. The concept map affords graphically organizing and planning the project, and the timeline displays and gives access to historical versions of project documents with support to show scheduled events.”
“Visualization of genome comparisons is an important research tool in biology, medicine and agricultural research. We present a new visualization system, SyntenyVista, which allows for interactive exploration of genome comparisons. It incorporates a novel feature called cartoon scaling designed to improve the user's ability to understand gene relationships. SyntenyVista is being deployed in the context of e-Science where it will provide an entry point to integrated data on genomes, animal models of disease, and disease genes.”
“In this paper we describe the demonstration of a gesture input supported by tactile feedback. The application example we created is a bouncing ball game, where tapping the device in horizontal or vertical directions controls ball motion. Motivation behind the demo is to explore possibilities for haptic interaction that are suitable for mobile devices. Contrary to continuous gesture recognition applications, approach chosen here is an event based, minimalist gesture input supported by simple tactile feedback events.”
“The walk-through FogScreen has become very popular and famous during recent years. It is an immaterial projection screen that consists of air and a little humidity, and enables high-quality projected images in thin air, as well as many new applications. In this paper we describe a new extension, the interactive FogScreen, which turns it into a computer touch screen.”
“InfoRadar is a personal, context-aware mobile device. It enables people to share opinions and discuss topics related to places. In addition to messaging, InfoRadar supports voting on user-defined subjects. The UI is based on a radar representation providing an isomorphic representation of the digital content with the physical world. The radar UI can be used to explore the current location by zooming in, or remote locations by zooming out. The radar also shows traces of user movement, useful when interpreting activity taking place in remote locations. When creating content the user defines when and where it is accessible to others, enabling the expression of the context within which the content is relevant. These features and their use are elaborated using two scenarios inspired by observations from a field trial.”
“This paper presents the development work of a browser-agnostic mobile e-mail application. Experiences from a legacy WAP product were imported to a new XHTML-based browser application, and several usability evaluations were performed. Findings from evaluations and development work are presented as guidelines that can be applied in developing mobile applications.”
“Proactivity has recently arisen as one of the focus areas within HCI. Proactive systems adhere to two premises: 1) working on behalf of, or pro, the user, and 2) acting on their own initiative. To extend researchers' views on how proactive systems can support the user, we clarify the concept of proactivity and suggest a typology that distinguishes between 6 modes of proactive resource management: preparation, optimization, advising, manipulation, inhibition, and finalization of user's resources. A scenario of mobile imaging is presented to illustrate how the typology can support the innovation of new use purposes. We argue that conceptual developments like the one proposed here are crucial for the advancement of the emerging field.”
“User Interface design has been evolving for years to keep pace with different emerging technologies that effect human-computer interaction. Formal techniques for command-line interfaces, Drag-and-drop User Interface creation for Graphical User Interfaces and Model-Based Interface Design for Multi-Device User Interfaces are a few examples of this evolution. Nowadays communication channels between devices are getting faster, more reliable and will be omnipresent in a matter of time. Human interaction will no longer be about interaction with one device, but involves interacting with a network of devices cooperating as a set of interaction resources. Based on well-known concepts from distributed systems and model-based User Interface Design we develop a model for distributed user interfaces. One missing piece is support for distributed interfaces in the models used during the design of user interfaces. We will discuss how Dygimes, a testbed for model-based user interface development, provides support for distributed user interfaces. User mobility is a key issue, since mostly ubiquitous environments will benefit of distributed User Interfaces. In every respect location transparency plays an important role for human-device and device-device interaction.”
“The aim of the paper is to discuss the conception of design in the field of human-computer interaction. From an activity-theory perspective, three aspects of design issues in HCI are stressed. They are, first, a broader conception of what it means to design and which artefacts are to be designed; second, a more molar unit of analysis than merely the design of the computer system, including an extended time frame for the design process; and, third, taking designers most often neglected, namely the practitioner, seriously. Our method is to take a detailed case study as our point of departure, where the case begets the concepts, and at the same time works as a test bench for the generated ideas. Thus, methodologically we ask what a detailed case might tell about design related to HCI.”
“The concept of affordance as it applies to user interface design is widely used and accepted; possibly overused. This paper explores one of the constraints on affordance: culture. Graduate and undergraduate students in the United Kingdom and the United States were surveyed and asked to make judgements about the behaviour of abstracted Western-like objects. The study clearly shows that UK subjects thought the down position of a light switch indicates it is "ON"; for their US counterparts it was "OFF." We suggest that context (in the case of this study, culture) is often overlooked, but is central to affordance, to computer interface design, as well as to action and activity more generally.”
“We present Place Storming, an original method of brainstorming technological concepts, particularly in the area of pervasive computing. Place Storming is context-driven and play-based, combining real world environments with the immersive and performative aspects of gaming. In this paper, we discuss the background and techniques we used to create and deploy our method. Examples are drawn from a February 2004 Place Storming event to highlight key strengths of the method. Suggestions are made for what produces successful Place Storming sessions.”
“Desktop applications are more and more sophisticated. Often, the user needs several degrees of freedom (DOF) to accomplish his tasks. One solution is to provide two independent cursors for some types of interactions but this solution is mainly used in bi-manual interactions with multiple input devices. The goal of this paper is to provide a solution to manipulate two cursors with only one hand: a method for one user, with one hand, and two cursors. By this way, the second hand can be used for other purposes. We propose a new hybrid device between a haptic mouse and a trackball to give 2+2 DOF to user. A driver solution is shown to integrate this new device in Windows XP and to give an easy access to the new affordances. An application for pilot testing was implemented and the results show a high potential for the proposed solution.”
“With tomographic in situ visualization we present a novel approach to interactive data visualization and exploration. This visualization concept is useful for presentation of spatially co-located information that is normally not visible to the human's eye. The tomographic in situ display allows for interactive cutting through data in space by using a spatially tracked and calibrated display. In this paper we describe the technical apparatus of our prototype and describe an application for the tomographic in situ visualization in the field of indoor climate studies.”
“We describe a rhythmic interaction mechanism for mobile devices. A PocketPC with a three degree of freedom linear acceleration meter is used as the experimental platform for data acquisition. Dynamic Movement Primitives are used to learn the limit cycle behavior associated with the rhythmic gestures. We outline the open technical and user experience challenges in the development of usable rhythmic interfaces.”
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My devil's dictionary definition for an Intelligent Agent is a query program with a user interface that is so obscure that you must anthropomorphize it in order to account for its behavior.
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