Current Issue : April - June Volume : 2012 Issue Number : 2 Articles : 6 Articles
We analysed four Rational Unified Process (RUP) projects in Switzerland that identified themselves as following a user-centred\r\napproach. Grounded theory served for analysis of 12 interviews with software developers, project managers, and UI specialists.\r\nFor each professional group we analysed their work context, motivations, work practices, and strategies used to overcome the\r\nobstacles to user-centred design. Results show that end users did not participate in the projects. Instead of working directly with\r\nend users, participants used data from marketing research or consulted colleagues from other departments. Prototypes played an\r\nimportant role. We suggest the following remedies: (1) developing methods for easy integration of existing company knowledge\r\nabout products with usability features, (2) professionalising UI design by educating project stakeholders in standard UI design, (3)\r\ncreating an approved pool of company�s personas for UI specialists� work, and (4) educating customers on their right to get good\r\nuser interfaces....
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have great potential as sites for research within the social and\r\nhuman-computer interaction. In the MMORPGs, a stability player taxonomy model is very important for game design. It helps to\r\nbalance different types of players and improve business strategy of the game. The players in mobile MMORPGs are also connected\r\nwith social networks; many studies only use the player�s own attributes statistics or questionnaire survey method to predict player\r\ntaxonomy, so lots of social network relations� information will be lost. In this paper, by analyzing the impacts of player�s social\r\nnetwork, commercial operating data from mobile MMORPGs is used to establish our player taxonomy model (SN model). From\r\nthe model results, social network-related information in mobile MMORPGs will be considered as important factors to pose this\r\noptimized player taxonomy model. As experimental results showed, compared with another player taxonomy model (RA model),\r\nour proposed player taxonomy model can achieve good results: classification is more stable....
Today, several vehicles are equipped with a visual display combined with a haptic rotary device for handling in-vehicle information\r\nsystem tasks while driving. This experimental study investigates whether a haptic addition to a visual interface interferes with or\r\nsupports secondary task performance and whether haptic information could be used without taking eyes off road. Four interfaces\r\nwere compared during simulated driving: visual only, partly corresponding visual-haptic, fully corresponding visual-haptic, and\r\nhaptic only. Secondary task performance and subjective mental workload were measured. Additionally, the participants were\r\ninterviewed. It was found that some haptic support improved performance. However, when more haptic information was used,\r\nthe results diverged in terms of task completion time and interface comprehension. Some participants did not sense all haptics\r\nprovided, some did not comprehend the correspondence between the haptic and visual interfaces, and some did. Interestingly, the\r\nparticipants managed to complete the tasks when using haptic-only information....
In this paper we presents the results of our experimental study which aims to understand the impact of three interaction 3D\r\nmetaphors (ray casting, GoGo, and virtual hand) on the user experience in a semi-immersive collaborative virtual environment\r\n(the Braccetto System). For each session, participants are grouped in twos to reconstruct a puzzle by an assemblage of cubes. The\r\npuzzle to reconstruct corresponds to a gradient of colors. We found that there is a significant difference in the user experience\r\nby changing the interaction metaphor on the copresence, awareness, involvement, collaborative effort, satisfaction usability, and\r\npreference. These findings provide a basis for designing 3D navigation techniques in a CVE....
We present the results of an experimental study towards modeling the reader�s emotional state variations induced by the\r\ntypographic elements in electronic documents. Based on the dimensional theory of emotions we investigate how typographic\r\nelements, like font style (bold, italics, bold-italics) and font (type, size, color and background color), affect the reader�s\r\nemotional states, namely, Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance (PAD). An experimental procedure was implemented conforming to\r\nInternational Affective Picture System guidelines and incorporating the Self-AssessmentManikin test. Thirty students participated\r\nin the experiment. The stimulus was a short paragraph of text for which any content, emotion, and/or domain dependent\r\ninformation was excluded. The Analysis of Variance revealed the dependency of (a) all the three emotional dimensions on font\r\nsize and font/background color combinations and (b) the Pleasure dimension on font type and font style. We introduce a set of\r\nmapping rules showing how PAD vary on the discrete values of font style and font type elements. Moreover, we introduce a set of\r\nequations describing the PAD dimensions� dependency on font size. This novel model can contribute to the automated reader�s\r\nemotional state extraction in order, for example, to enhance the acoustic rendition of the documents, utilizing text-to-speech\r\nsynthesis....
When an interactive form in the world wide web requires users to fill in exact dates, this can be implemented in several ways. This\npaper discusses an empirical online study with n = 172 participants which compared six different versions to design input fields\nfor date entries. The results revealed that using a drop-down menu is best when format errors must be avoided, whereas using\nonly one input field and placing the format requirements left or inside the text box led to faster completion time and higher user\nsatisfaction....
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