Researchers in the ontology-design field have developed the content for
ontologies in many domain areas. This distributed nature of ontology
development has led to a large number of ontologies covering overlapping
domains. In order for these ontologies to be reused, they first need to be
merged or aligned to one another. We developed a suite of tools for managing
multiple ontologies. These suite provides users with a uniform framework for
comparing, aligning, and merging ontologies, maintaining versions, translating
between different formalisms. Two of the tools in the suite support
semi-automatic ontology merging: IPROMPT is an interactive ontology-merging
tool that guides the user through the merging process, presenting him with
suggestions for next steps and identifying inconsistencies and potential
problems. ANCHORPROMPT uses a graph structure of ontologies to find correlation
between concepts and to provide additional information for IPROMPT.
Salvendy, Guangfeng Songand Gavriel (2003): Effectiveness of automatic and expert generated narrative and guided instructions for task-oriented web browsing. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59 (6) pp. 777-795
This study investigated how instructions may be created to facilitate web
browsing tasks. Two types of instructions were considered. Narrative
instructions are text-based while guided instructions use graphic annotations.
One way to create both types of instructions is to utilize the specialty of
human experts. A method is also provided for automatic generation of both types
of instructions based on the learning of user experience in web browsing. An
experiment was conducted to test the effect of types of instruction, sources of
instruction, and task complexity setting on performance variables in web
browsing. The results of the experiment indicated that (1) by using web
annotations, guided instructions resulted in better performance and
satisfactions than narrative instructions in web browsing, (2) based on
learning of web browsing activities, automatically generated guided
instructions are comparable to expert-created guided instructions in terms of
their effect on the performance of web browsing.
This paper addresses a sensitive issue, of presence experienced by people
interacting with a virtual environment (VE). Understanding `presence', both
theoretically and empirically, is important for designers interested in
building effective computer-mediated environments for learning and work
activities. The concept of presence has been treated mostly as a state of mind,
to be investigated through `objective' and `subjective' measurement devices.
The authors propose to add a different approach, which can address presence as
an action-based process. This approach considers presence as the ongoing result
of the actions performed in an environment and the local and cultural resources
deployed by actors. In this sense, `presence' can be captured by monitoring the
sequence of participants' actions and the aspects of the environment that are
involved in this process; discourse/interaction analysis represents a fitting
method for this goal. Sequences of interaction with a virtual library are used
to illustrate some core aspects of an ethnographic, action-based approach to
presence, such as the action possibilities envisaged by participants, the
configuration of the virtual objects, the norms that regulate the interaction,
the resources that are imported in the VE. These aspects are a necessary step
to understand users' presence in the VE and to plan consequent interventions to
ameliorate the design of the interface.
Times New Roman and Arial typefaces in 10- and 12-point, dot-matrix and
anti-aliased format conditions were compared for readability (accuracy, reading
speed, and accuracy/reading speed), as well as perceptions of typeface
legibility, sharpness, ease of reading, and general preference. In assessing
readability, the 10-point anti-aliased Arial typeface was read slower than the
other type conditions. Examining perceptions of typeface legibility, sharpness,
and ease of reading detected significant effects for typeface, size, and
format. Overall, the 12-point dot-matrix Arial typeface was preferred to the
other typefaces. Recommendations for appropriate typeface combinations for
computer-displayed text are discussed.
Lin, Y., Zhang, W. J. and Watson, L. G. (2003): Using eye movement parameters for evaluating human-machine interface frameworks under normal control operation and fault detection situations. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59 (6) pp. 837-873
A human-machine interface framework provides general guidelines for what
information should be put on an interface display screen. The framework is thus
a first step towards the design of an effective and efficient interface. This
paper reports on an experimental study of two proposed frameworks: the
ecological interface design framework and the function-behaviour-state
framework. In order to provide an unbiased comparative evaluation for both
interfaces, the same application problem is used. The interfaces, based on each
of the two frameworks, are implemented with as similar look-and-feel forms as
possible in the presentation of information contents. Only the normal control
operation and fault detection situations are considered at this stage of the
study. In addition, in this study three categories of measures are used,
namely: the performance measure; the physiological measure (the eye movement
measure: the eye fixation and the pupil diameter change, in particular); and
the subjective (or the user-rated) measure. The major results obtained from the
study includes the following: (1) the information called the abstract function
in the ecological interface design framework may not positively correlate to
the performance improvement yet may increase the mental workload, (2) the
function-behaviour-state framework seems more agreeable with the operator's
mental model, and (3) operators may perform equally well with a
function-behaviour-state interface but with a reduced mental workload. It is
also found that the eye fixation measure is highly consistent with the
performance measure and the subjective measure. The pupil diameter measure is
found not to be significantly sensitive to the mental workload information;
however, it appears sensitive to the mental workload information among
individual participants and shows a consistent result with the other measures
used.
Two hundred and eighty-two participants formed 94 groups of size three and
completed an estimation task by interacting either face-to-face or via a
video-conferencing system. Results showed significant differences across
conditions with regard to the confidence attached by groups to their decisions,
the degree to which groups were able to improve upon the best individually
arrived at decision, and the self-reported enjoyment of group members. Compared
to face-to-face groups, video-conferencing groups showed lower levels of
confidence in their decisions, especially if they were instructed to discuss
their beliefs and assumptions underlying their estimates and not the estimates
themselves. However, this lower level of confidence was more appropriate than
that of the face-to-face groups. Groups interacting face-to-face were more
likely to improve upon the best individual solution, and, on average, improved
to a greater degree. Further, video-conferencing groups reported modifying more
of their beliefs during discussion. However, there were no significant
differences between the two interaction media on the following outcome
dimensions: accuracy; overconfidence; commitment to the group decision; size of
credible intervals; improvement over average initial individual estimates; and
the number of beliefs discussed or learned. Implications for the design and
application of advanced systems for decision-making support and research are
discussed.
Kim, Jinwoo, Lee, Jooeun and Choi, Dongseong (2003): Designing emotionally evocative homepages: an empirical study of the quantitative relations between design factors and emotional dimensions. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59 (6) pp. 899-940
Emotional aspects of homepages are becoming more important as people spend
more time in cyberspace. This research aims to identify quantitative
relationships between key design factors and generic dimensions of secondary
emotions so that we may develop homepages which target emotions more
effectively. In order to achieve this goal, we conducted three related studies.
In the first study, we identified 13 generic dimensions of secondary emotions
that people usually feel when viewing diverse homepages. In the second study,
we identified key design factors that professional designers frequently use in
their attempts to develop emotionally evocative homepages. Finally, in the
third study, we identified quantitative relationships between the key design
factors and the 13 emotional dimensions. This paper describes these three
studies and concludes with the implications and limitations of the study
results.
Many computer users face problems in their interaction as a result of the
native language employed by the application. The language of the application is
often at variance with the native language of its users. This issue is
frequently addressed through localization. In turn, localization generates a
range of new problems. We propose an alternative to localization that is
analogous to cinematic subtitles. This has the potential to reduce the user
interaction defects that otherwise arise with localization whilst benefiting
users through an additional channel of information in their own language. This
paper outlines a prototype implementation and describes our initial evaluation
of this approach. We suggest that our complementary `subtitles' promise
consistent support for all applications in the user's computing environment and
yield a system that is expandable and much easier to maintain than
pre-localized software.
Students still take class notes using pencil and paper -- although digital
documents are more legible, easier to search in and easier to edit -- in part
because of the lack of software to support note-taking. Class notes are
characterized by free spatial organization, many small chunks of text, and a
dense mix of text and graphic elements. These characteristics imply that a
note-taking system should use pen, keyboard and mouse-or-equivalent; allow the
swift entry of text at any desired position; and minimize the need to switch
between input tools. A system with these properties was built and used by 10
subjects in a controlled study and by four users in their classes. Some users
preferred our system to pencil and paper, suggesting that taking class notes
with the computer is feasible.
Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an important knowledge component for
graduate management information systems (MIS) and E-commerce (EC) programs. HCI
topics, such as user-centered design and usability testing, have begun to
receive increasing attention in MIS/EC curricula because of their importance in
the development of Web-based solutions. This paper discusses issues and
approaches for integrating HCI topics into masters level MIS/EC programs.
Research on HCI topics related to MIS provides a theoretical foundation for
student learning. By bridging research with these curricula, researchers are
challenged to examine how HCI approaches can improve user acceptance of new
systems. A case study illustrates how HCI topics can be taught as a stand-alone
course or incorporated in existing MIS/EC courses. Drawing from the case study,
the paper also addresses pedagogical challenges regarding student skill sets,
learning outcomes, innovative pedagogies, tools and technology, and HCI issues
for advanced IS/EC topics.
Data visualization has the potential to assist humans in analysing and
comprehending large volumes of data, and to detect patterns, clusters and
outliers that are not obvious using non-graphical forms of presentation. For
this reason, data visualizations have an important role to play in a diverse
range of applied problems, including data exploration and mining, information
retrieval, and intelligence analysis. Unfortunately, while various different
approaches are available for data visualization, there have been few rigorous
evaluations of their effectiveness. This paper presents the results of three
controlled experiments comparing the ability of four different visualization
approaches to help people answer meaningful questions for binary data sets. Two
of these visualizations, Chernoff faces and star glyphs, represent objects
using simple icon-like displays. The other two visualizations use a spatial
arrangement of the objects, based on a model of human mental representation,
where more similar objects are placed nearer each other. One of these spatial
displays uses a common features model of similarity, while the other uses a
distinctive features model. The first experiment finds that both glyph
visualizations lead to slow, inaccurate answers being given with low
confidence, while the faster and more confident answers for spatial
visualizations are only accurate when the common features similarity model is
used. The second experiment, which considers only the spatial visualizations,
supports this finding, with the common features approach again producing more
accurate answers. The third experiment measures human performance using the raw
data in tabular form, and so allows the usefulness of visualizations in
facilitating human performance to be assessed. This experiment confirms that
people are faster, more confident and more accurate when an appropriate
visualization of the data is made available.
Schaik, Paul Van and Ling, Jonathan (2003): Using on-line surveys to measure three key constructs of the quality of human-computer interaction in web sites: psychometric properties and implications. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59 (5) pp. 545-567
On-line surveys are now an important tool for data collection on the World
Wide Web (the Web). Determining the psychometric properties of key constructs
such as disorientation, ease of use and flow is of paramount importance in
establishing the quality of users' interactions with web sites. The current
study used techniques of experimental research and on-line surveys to
investigate the psychometric properties of existing instruments for measuring
these constructs using two response formats: visual analogue scale and Likert
scale. A 2x2 design with response format and orientation support as independent
variables was used. Ninety participants carried out an information retrieval
task using an experimental on-line shopping site before completing the scales.
Factor analysis confirmed the existence of three distinct scales that possessed
high reliability. Evidence for validity, and to a lesser extent, sensitivity,
was found. Although psychometric results generally converged, some differences
between the two response formats were found. A framework for the comprehensive
investigation of response formats of on-line questionnaires is proposed as a
basis for future research. Practical implications for the on-line measurement
of the quality of users' interactions with web-based systems are discussed.
The future of human-computer interfaces may include systems which are
human-like in abilities and behavior. One particularly interesting aspect of
human-to-human communication is the ability of some conversation partners to
sensitively pick up on the nuances of the other's utterances, as they shift
from moment to moment, and to use this information to subtly adjust responses
to express interest, supportiveness, sympathy and the like. This paper reports
a model of this ability in the context of a spoken dialog system for a
tutoring-like interaction. The system used information about the user's
internal state -- such as feelings of confidence, confusion, pleasure and
dependency -- as inferred from the prosody of his utterances and the context,
and used this information to select the most appropriate acknowledgement form
at each moment. Although straight-forward rating reveals no significant
preference for a system with this ability, a clear preference was found when
users rated the system after listening to a recording of their interaction with
it. This suggests that human-like, real-time sensitivity can be of value in
interfaces. The paper further discusses ways to discover and quantify such
rules of social interaction, using corpus-based analysis, developer intuitions
and feedback from naive judges; and further suggests that the technique of
"evaluation after re-listening" is useful for evaluating spoken dialog systems
which operate at near-human levels of performance.
The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that a computer tool
can change the way children approach the task of writing and improve their
writing performance. HARRY, a web-based computer tutor, provides a
Vygotskian-like scaffolding of the knowledge transforming mature writing
process and presents it to children individually in a conference situation. The
effects of the computer tutor are analysed by comparing stories produced by
three children of varied writing ability, who wrote a control and a
HARRY-assisted story, and by observing the children as they wrote. A control
group also wrote two stories without receiving assistance for either story. The
study's hypothesis was confirmed. With HARRY's assistance, the children wrote
better stories and employed the revision process characteristic of mature
writers. Vygotsky's work suggests that children will learn to adopt the mature
approach from repeated use of the system and that the scaffolding should be
reduced gradually. However, as the system relied upon the children's
willingness to first request, then act upon the available guidance, the system
would benefit from further development to ensure children interact sufficiently
with HARRY.
Teo, Hock-Hai, Chan, Hock Chuan, Wei, Kwok Kee and Zhang, Zhongju (2003): Evaluating information accessibility and community adaptivity features for sustaining virtual learning communities. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59 (5) pp. 671-697
Virtual communities have been identified as the "killer applications" on the
Internet Information Superhighway. Their impact is increasingly pervasive, with
activities ranging from the economic and marketing to the social and
educational. Despite their popularity, little is understood as to what factors
contribute to the sustainability of virtual communities. This study focuses on
a specific type of virtual communities -- the virtual learning communities. It
employs an experiment to examine the impact of two critical issues in system
design -- information accessibility and community adaptivity -- on the
sustainability of virtual learning communities. Adopting an extended Technology
Acceptance Model, the experiment exposed 69 subjects to six different virtual
learning communities differentiated by two levels of information accessibility
and three levels of community adaptivity, solicited their feelings and
perceptions, and measured their intentions to use the virtual learning
communities. Results indicate that both information accessibility and community
adaptivity have significant effects on user perceptions and behavioural
intention. Implications for theory and practice are drawn and discussed.
In this paper we describe some results of the Alice project. Alice is an
ontology-based e-commerce project which aims to support online users in the
task of shopping. Ontologies describing customers, products, typical shopping
tasks and the external context form the basis for the Alice architecture. We
also build upon two novel interface metaphors originally developed for
navigating databases: the Guides metaphor and Dynamic Queries. The Guides
metaphor was developed at Apple to reduce the cognitive load on learners
navigating a large hypermedia database. Within Alice we use the Guides metaphor
to allow online shoppers to interact with the system in a variety of ways. In
effect, by choosing these options they are classifying themselves for the
purpose of customizing system responses. We discuss the link between Alice
Guides and Kozinets' notion of e-tribes or Virtual Communities of Consumption.
Our second interface metaphor Dynamic Queries (coupled with Starfield displays)
allows users to very quickly find relevant items by displaying the results of
queries, posed via specialized slider widgets, within 100 ms. We have
constructed a tool, Quiver, which constructs Dynamic Query interfaces
on-the-fly as the result of queries to knowledge models stored on the Alice
server.
This paper presents the results of an observational study of industrial
logic designers at Lamb Technion. The purpose of this study was to determine
the current methods of logic design used in industry. These observations can be
used to evaluate recent academic proposals of methods for generating
controllers for machines, as well as suggesting new methods.
By observing the logic designers it was determined that designing logic for
machining systems is substantially different than writing computer code, both
in the specification and in the people who will design and use the system. In
addition, recent academic developments in Discrete Event Systems are difficult
to apply to the problems of industrial logic control. Even methods which
researchers design specifically for industrial logic design are difficult to
apply, both due to the lack of support for the methods, and the unsuitability
of the methods to solve problems in this domain.
The primary observations of this study are the following.
* The observed Logic designers need to at least: determine acceptable machine
behavior, foresee potential error conditions, predict user behavior, and
design the logic needed for a machine. This is a greater range of
responsibilities than expected.
* Logic for one machine is generally copied directly from a previous project.
However, copying logic generally involves manually retyping everything due
to incompatibilities in the development environments.
* Customers continue to ask for more features, and it is unlikely that this
trend will stop. Some of these features are extremely difficult to implement
using existing methods. Such features include: detailed part tracking, more
sophisticated user interfaces, and greater diagnostic ability.
As in many other applications, the rapid proliferation and unrestricted
Web-based publishing of health-related content have made finding pertinent and
useful healthcare information increasingly difficult. Although the development
of healthcare information retrieval systems such as medical search engines and
peer-reviewed medical Web directories has helped alleviate this information and
cognitive overload problem, the effectiveness of these systems has been limited
by low search precision, poor presentation of search results, and the required
user search effort. To address these challenges, we have developed a
domain-specific meta-search tool called Cancer Spider. By leveraging
post-retrieval document clustering techniques, this system aids users in
querying multiple medical data sources to gain an overview of the retrieved
documents and locating answers of high quality to a wide spectrum of health
questions. The system presents the retrieved documents to users in two
different views: (1) Web pages organized by a list of key phrases, and (2) Web
pages clustered into regions discussing different topics on a two-dimensional
map (self-organizing map). In this paper, we present the major components of
the Cancer Spider system and a user evaluation study designed to evaluate the
effectiveness and efficiency of our approach. Initial results comparing Cancer
Spider with NLM Gateway, a premium medical search site, have shown that they
achieved comparable performances measured by precision, recall, and F-measure.
Cancer Spider required less user searching time, fewer documents that need to
be browsed, and less user effort.
Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an important knowledge component for
graduate management information systems (MIS) and E-commerce (EC) programs. HCI
topics, such as user-centered design and usability testing, have begun to
receive increasing attention in MIS/EC curricula because of their importance in
the development of Web-based solutions. This paper discusses issues and
approaches for integrating HCI topics into masters level MIS/EC programs.
Research on HCI topics related to MIS provides a theoretical foundation for
student learning. By bridging research with these curricula, researchers are
challenged to examine how HCI approaches can improve user acceptance of new
systems. A case study illustrates how HCI topics can be taught as a stand-alone
course or incorporated in existing MIS/EC courses. Drawing from the case study,
the paper also addresses pedagogical challenges regarding student skill sets,
learning outcomes, innovative pedagogies, tools and technology, and HCI issues
for advanced IS/EC topics.
Flow theory has been applied to computer-mediated environments to study
positive user experiences such as increased exploratory behavior,
communication, learning, positive affect, and computer use. However, a review
of the existing flow studies in computer-mediated environments in Psychology,
Consumer Behavior, Communications, Human-Computer Interaction, and Management
Information Systems shows ambiguities in the conceptualization of flow
constructs and inconsistency in the flow models. It thus raises the question of
whether the direct adoption of traditional flow theory is appropriate without a
careful re-conceptualization to consider the uniqueness of the
computer-mediated environments. This paper focuses on flow antecedents and
identifies the importance of separating the task from the artefact within a
computer-mediated environment. It proposes a component-based model that
consists of person (P), artefact (A), and task (T), as well as the interactions
of these components. The model, named the PAT model, is developed by
understanding the original flow theory, reviewing existing empirical flow
studies within computer-mediated environments, and analysing the
characteristics of computer-mediated environments. A set of propositions is
constructed to demonstrate the predictive power of the model.
Internet-delivered e-services are increasingly being made available to
consumers; however, little is known about how consumers evaluate them for
potential adoption. Past Technology Adoption Research has focused primarily on
the positive utility gains attributable to system adoption. This research
extends that approach to include measures of negative utility (potential
losses) attributable to e-service adoption. Drawing from Perceived Risk Theory,
specific risk facets were operationalized, integrated, and empirically tested
within the Technology Acceptance Model resulting in a proposed e-services
adoption model. Results indicated that e-services adoption is adversely
affected primarily by performance-based risk perceptions, and perceived ease of
use of the e-service reduced these risk concerns. Implications of integrating
perceived risk into the proposed e-services adoption model are discussed.
Yi, Mun Y. and Hwang, Yujong (2003): Predicting the use of web-based information systems: self-efficacy, enjoyment, learning goal orientation, and the technology acceptance model. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59 (4) pp. 431-449
With the growing reliance on computerized systems and increasing rapidity of
the introduction of new technologies, user acceptance of technology continues
to be an important issue. Drawing upon recent findings in information systems,
human computer interaction, and social psychology, the present research extends
the technology acceptance model by incorporating the motivation variables of
self-efficacy, enjoyment, and learning goal orientation in order to predict the
use of Web-based information systems. One hundred nine subjects participated in
the study, which was conducted in a field setting with the Blackboard system, a
Web-based class management system. A survey was administered after a 2-week
trial period and the actual use of the system was recorded by the Blackboard
system over 8 weeks. The results largely support the proposed model,
highlighting the important roles of self-efficacy, enjoyment, and learning goal
orientation in determining the actual use of the system. Practical implications
of the results are provided.
We examined the home pages of the 50 US states over the years 1997-2002 to
discover the dimensions underlying people's perceptions of state government
home pages, to observe how those dimensions have changed over the years, to
identify different types of state home pages, and to see how these types have
changed. We found that three primary dimensions explain the variation in
perceptions of home pages. These are the layout of the page, its navigation
support, and its information density. Over the years, variation in navigation
support declined and variation in information density increased. We discovered
that four types of state government home page have existed continuously from
1997 to 2001. These are the `Long List of Text Links', the `Simple Rectangle',
the `Short L', and the `High Density/Long L'. To this taxonomy, two other page
types can be added: the `Portal' page and the `Boxes' page. The taxonomy we
have identified allows for a better understanding of the design of US state
home pages, and may generalize to other categories of home pages.
The fields of HCI and MIS share many concerns but have traditionally not
shared literatures, theories and results. This special issue is a first attempt
at bridging the disciplinary divide. In this paper, the history of both fields
is briefly outlined and reasons for the independence of each are examined. The
criteria for paper inclusion are outlined and each paper is briefly introduced.
When creating annotation information in a free-form environment, ambiguity
arises during the analysis stage between geometric information and the
annotations. This needs to be resolved so that the accurate creation of
annotation information in a free-form annotation environment is possible. This
paper identifies and analyses the ambiguities, specifying methods that are
tailored to each of the various contexts that can cause conflicts with
free-form marking in a XML-based annotation environment. The proposed general
method is based on context which includes various textual and structure
information between free-form marking and the annotations themselves. The
context information used is expressed in context-based annotation markup
language (CAML), a language defined within the paper. The results are printed
and shared through a system specifically implemented for this study. The
results from the implementation of the proposed method show that the annotated
areas included in the free-form marking information are more accurate,
achieving more accurate exchange results amongst multiple users in a
heterogeneous document environment.
In the last years, the main orientation of formal concept analysis (FCA) has
turned from mathematics towards computer science. This article provides a
review of this new orientation and analyses why and how FCA and computer
science attracted each other. It discusses FCA as a knowledge representation
formalism using five knowledge representation principles provided by Davis et
al. (1993). It then studies how and why mathematics-based researchers got
attracted by computer science. We will argue for continuing this trend by
integrating the two research areas FCA and ontology engineering.
The second part of the article discusses three lines of research which
witness the new orientation of FCA: FCA as a conceptual clustering technique
and its application for supporting the merging of ontologies; the efficient
computation of association rules and the structuring of the results; and the
visualization and management of conceptual hierarchies and ontologies including
its application in an email management system.
HomeNetToo is a longitudinal field study to examine the antecedents and
consequences of home Internet use in low-income families. Among the antecedents
considered are attitudes about the Internet and their ability to predict
Internet use. Participants in the project were 117 adults who completed
attitude measures at pre-trial, 3 months, 9 months and post-trial (16 months)
and had their Internet use automatically recorded. Ethnographic accounts of
their experiences with the Internet were also obtained. Findings indicate that
attitudes about privacy and reliability of information on the Internet predict
Internet use, but not as expected. Participants who believed less in privacy
and reliability of information used the Internet more, even after the
contributions of demographic characteristics (race and age), pre-trial
experience using the Internet, and actual Internet use during the preceding
time period were considered. Attitudes about the potential harm to children and
health from Internet use predicted less use. Implications for efforts to reduce
the digital divide, the importance of gathering both quantitative and
qualitative data, and directions for future research are discussed.
Pearson, Robert and Schaik, Paul Van (2003): The effect of spatial layout of and link colour in web pages on performance in a visual search task and an interactive search task. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59 (3) pp. 327-353
This study aimed to investigate the validity of psychological experimental
methods within human-computer interaction research (Carroll, 1989) and to
examine design guidelines pertaining to hypertext link colour and positioning
of navigation menu frames as part of web documents. The results of past
research on both link colour and positioning of menus are mixed and guidelines
are usually not based on empirical evidence (Tullis, 1997; Shneiderman, 1997).
The study used a repeated measures experimental design. Participants carried
out both a visual search task and an interactive search task. Task performance
on the two tasks did not to correlate (p>0.05), indicating that the visual
search task may lack external validity. Results of the interactive search task
suggest that the design convention of blue links (Nielsen, 1999a) should be
retained as responses for blue were found to be significantly quicker than red,
F(1,117)=14.526, p<0.001, MS{sub:colour}=89.866. Furthermore, an effect of
presentation position, F(3,117)=8.410, p<0.001, MS{sub:position}=61.015, was
found, with support for menus on the left (Nielsen, 1999a; Campbell & Maglio,
1999) or right (Nielsen, 1999a). Evidence was also found to support the
conjecture that experienced Internet users might have formed automatic
attention responses to specific web page designs. The need for validation of
behavioural and psychometric methods with task performance and the use of
cognitive-perceptual-motor modelling are discussed.
Information Technology has permeated many facets of work life in
industrialized nations. With the expansion of Internet access we are now
witnessing an expansion of the use of information technology in the form of
electronic commerce. This current study tests the applicability of one
prominent information technology uptake model, the Technology Acceptance Model
(Int. J. Man Mach. Stud. 38 (1993) 475), within an electronic commerce setting.
Specifically, the relationship between the perceived ease of use, usefulness
and three electronically recorded indicators of use were assessed within the
context of an electronic supermarket. A total of 247 participants completed the
attitudinal measures. Electronically recorded indicators of use in the form of
deliveries, purchase value and number of log-ons to the system were also
recorded for the month the participants completed the questionnaire and 6
further months. Results indicated that the Technology Acceptance Model could be
successfully applied to an electronic supermarket setting, providing empirical
support for the ability of the Technology Acceptance Model to predict actual
behaviour. The Technology Acceptance Model explained up to 15% of the variance
in the behavioural indicators through perceived ease of use and usefulness of
the system. However, the perceived ease of use of the system did not uniquely
contribute to the prediction of behaviour when usefulness was considered,
indicating a mediation effect. Future research should now focus on product and
service attributes to more fully explain the use of electronic commerce
services.
A number of researchers around the world have built machines that recognize,
express, model, communicate, and respond to emotional information, instances of
"affective computing." This article raises and responds to several criticisms
of affective computing, articulating state-of-the art research challenges,
especially with respect to affect in human-computer interaction.
This paper describes the results of a research project aimed at implementing
a `realistic' 3D Embodied Agent that can be animated in real-time and is
`believable and expressive': that is, able to coherently communicate complex
information through the combination and the tight synchronisation of verbal and
nonverbal signals. We describe, in particular, how we `animate' this Agent
(that we called Greta) so as to enable her to manifest the affective states
that are dynamically activated and de-activated in her mind during the dialog
with the user. The system is made up of three tightly interrelated components:
* A representation of the Agent Mind: this includes long and short-term
affective components (personality and emotions) and simulates how emotions
are triggered and decay over time according to the Agent's personality and
to the context, and how several emotions may overlap. Dynamic belief
networks with weighting of goals is the formalism we employ to this purpose.
* A mark-up language to denote the communicative meanings that may be
associated with dialog moves performed by the Agent.
* A translation of the Agent's tagged move into a face expression, that
combines appropriately the available channels (gaze direction, eyebrow
shape, head direction and movement etc). The final output is a 3-D facial
model that respects the MPEG-4 standard and uses MPEG-4 Facial Animation
Parameters to produce facial expressions.
Throughout the paper, we illustrate the results obtained, with an example of
dialog in the domain of `Advice about eating disorders'. The paper concludes
with an analysis of advantages of our cognitive model of emotion triggering and
of the problems found in testing it. Although we did not yet complete a formal
evaluation of our system, we briefly describe how we plan to assess the agent's
believability in terms of consistency of its communicative behaviour.
This paper focuses on the role of emotion and expressive behavior in
regulating social interaction between humans and expressive anthropomorphic
robots, either in communicative or teaching scenarios. We present the
scientific basis underlying our humanoid robot's emotion models and expressive
behavior, and then show how these scientific viewpoints have been adapted to
the current implementation. Our robot is also able to recognize affective
intent through tone of voice, the implementation of which is inspired by the
scientific findings of the developmental psycholinguistics community. We first
evaluate the robot's expressive displays in isolation. Next, we evaluate the
robot's overall emotive behavior (i.e. the coordination of the affective
recognition system, the emotion and motivation systems, and the expression
system) as it socially engages nave human subjects face-to-face.
The present objective was to investigate pupil size variation during and
after auditory emotional stimulation. Thirty subjects' (15 females and 15
males) pupil responses were measured while listening to 10 negative and 10
positive highly arousing sounds (e.g. a baby crying and laughing), and 10
emotionally neutral sounds (e.g. regular office noise). The subjects also rated
their subjective experiences related to the stimuli. The results showed that
the pupil size was significantly larger during both emotionally negative and
positive stimuli than during neutral stimuli. The results for the time period
of 2 s following the stimulus offset showed that pupil size was significantly
larger after both negative and positive than neutral stimulation. These results
suggest that the autonomic nervous system is sensitive to highly arousing
emotional stimulation. The subjective ratings confirmed that the stimuli
influenced the subjects' emotional experiences as expected. Further analyses
showed that female subjects had significantly larger pupil responses than males
only to neutral stimuli and only during the auditory stimulation. In sum, our
results showed that systematically chosen stimuli significantly affected the
subjects' physiological reactions and subjective experiences. It could be
possible to use pupil size variation as a computer input signal, for example,
in affective computing. Auditory emotion-related cues could also be utilized to
modulate the user's emotional reactions.
Physiological indicators of arousal have long been known to be sensitive to
mental events such as positive and negative emotion, changes in attention and
changes in workload. It has therefore been suggested that human physiology
might be of use in the evaluation of software usability. To this, there are two
main approaches or paradigms: (i) comparisons of physiological readings across
periods of time to indicate different arousal levels under different
circumstances, and (ii) the detection of short-term (occurring in seconds)
physiological changes in response to specific events. Both approaches involve
methodological, analytical and interpretational difficulties. Also, the tight
experimental controls usually adopted in psychophysiological experimentation
can be at odds with the needs of applied usability testing. This paper reports
initial investigations of these approaches and difficulties in the evaluation
of software interfaces. From exploratory data, a preliminary model is proposed
which combines the two paradigms for identifying significant HCI events.
Explorations of the model within the context of a web-related task are then
discussed. These explorations suggest techniques and procedures for applied
usability testing, and the results point to ways in which physiological data
may be informative about software usability. However, further investigations
involving variations in task and procedure are required.
This paper illustrates our recent work on analysis and classification of
expressive gesture in human full-body movement and in particular in dance
performances. An experiment is presented which is the result of a joint work
carried out at the DIST-InfoMus Lab, University of Genova, Italy, and at the
Department of Psychology of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, in the framework
of the EU-IST project MEGA (Multisensory Expressive Gesture Applications,
www.megaproject.org). The experiment aims at (i) individuating which motion
cues are mostly involved in conveying the dancer's expressive intentions to the
audience during a dance performance, (ii) measuring and analyzing them in order
to classify dance gestures in term of basic emotions, (iii) testing a
collection of developed models and algorithms for analysis of such expressive
content by comparing their performances with spectators' ratings of the same
dance fragments. The paper discusses the experiment in detail with reference to
related conceptual issues, developed techniques, and obtained results.
We describe the design and implementation of SenToy: a tangible doll with
sensors that allows a user to influence the emotions of a synthetic character
in a game. SenToy is an input device that allows the user to perform gestures
or movements that the sensors inside the doll pick up. The gestures are
interpreted according to a scheme found through two different user studies: one
Wizard of Oz study and one study with a fully functioning SenToy. Different
gestures express one of the following emotions: anger, fear, surprise, sadness,
gloating and happiness. Depending upon the expressed emotion, the synthetic
character in the game will, in turn, perform different actions (trading,
duelling, etc.). The evaluation of SenToy acting as the interface to the
computer game FantasyA has shown that the users were able to express the
desired emotions to influence the synthetic characters, and that overall
players liked the doll as an interface.
Models of affective behavior are critical for the development of training
systems that are designed to exercise social interactions. Potential
applications include various security-oriented operations such as police
interrogation, airport security, border crossings, and military peacekeeping.
Aside from speech, humans also communicate through vocalizations and
inflections, as well as with body language. Such nonverbal communication can
convey affect such as anger or nervousness that is important in identifying
deception. In this research, a trainee is asked to perform checkpoint duty and
question drivers of vehicles about their identity and reasons for entering a
secured area. Most of the encounters are routine and innocuous, but
occasionally a scenario unfolds that requires additional interrogation and
rapid decision-making the part of the trainee. These special scenarios require
the individual to draw upon his/her knowledge of social interactions in order
to make the proper decisions and act appropriately. Virtual environments that
address this form of training are few. Accordingly, the present paper describes
an ongoing program of research designed to generate affective states for
intelligent agents, create affective component behaviors to convey cues for
anger, nervousness, and deception, and provide a complex interrogative training
environment to exercise judgment-based decision-making.
Accounting for a patient's emotional state is integral in medical care.
Tele-health research attests to the challenge clinicians must overcome in
assessing patient emotional state when modalities are limited (J. Adv. Nurs.
36(5) 668). The extra effort involved in addressing this challenge requires
attention, skill, and time. Large caseloads may not afford tele-home
health-care (tele-HHC) clinicians the time and focus necessary to accurately
assess emotional states and trends. Unstructured interviews with experienced
tele-HHC providers support the introduction of objective indicators of
patients' emotional status in a useful form to enhance patient care. We discuss
our contribution to addressing this challenge, which involves building user
models not only of the physical characteristics of users -- in our case
patients -- but also models of their emotions. We explain our research in
progress on Affective Computing for tele-HHC applications, which includes:
developing a system architecture for monitoring and responding to human
multimodal affect and emotions via multimedia and empathetic avatars; mapping
of physiological signals to emotions and synthesizing the patient's affective
information for the health-care provider. Our results using a wireless
non-invasive wearable computer to collect physiological signals and mapping
these to emotional states show the feasibility of our approach, for which we
lastly discuss the future research issues that we have identified.
Looking at the intersection of cognition, emotion, computing, and context
reveals various historical gaps that are important to understand in order to
progress in applying affective computing technologies to real-world problems
involving human-computer interaction (HCI). The paper reviews several streams
of research along these lines while striving for a philosophical and conceptual
understanding of what affecting computing means for new visions of HCI. In turn
this provides a foundational structure for positioning the special issue and
sets up the papers to provide readers with a broad exposure to the potential
(and hazards) involved with affective computing as it impacts cognate areas of
emphasis. Finally, the hope is put forth that affective computing must be
developed as a user-centered technology to be of value for unexplored frontiers
of the digital global economy.
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Yousay:
Mar 18th, 2010
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