Sonically-enhanced widgets: comments on Brewster and Clarke, ICAD 1997

This paper presents a review of the research surrounding the paper “The Design and Evaluation of a Sonically Enhanced Tool Palette” by Brewster and Clarke from ICAD 1997. A historical perspective is given followed by a discussion of how this work has fed into current developments in the area

An empirical study of web interface design on small display devices

This paper reports an empirical study that explores the problem of finding a highly-efficient, user-friendly interface design method on small display devices. We compared three models using our PDA interface simulator: presentation optimization method, semantic conversion method, and zooming method. A controlled experiment has been carried out to identify the pros and cons of each method. The results show that of the three interface methods, the zooming method is slightly better than the semantic conversion method, while they both outperform the optimizing presentation method. © 2004 IEEE

Investigating context-aware clues to assist navigation for visually impaired people

It is estimated that 7.4 million people in Europe are visually impaired [1]. Limitations of traditional mobility aids (i.e. white canes and guide dogs) coupled with a proliferation of context-aware technologies (e.g. Electronic Travel Aids, Global Positioning Systems and Geographical Information Systems), have stimulated research and development into navigational systems for the visually impaired. However, current research appears very technology focused, which has led to an insufficient appreciation of Human Computer Interaction, in particular task/requirements analysis and notions of contextual interactions. The study reported here involved a smallscale investigation into how visually impaired people interact with their environmental context during micro-navigation (through immediate environment) and/or macro-navigation (through distant environment) on foot. The purpose was to demonstrate the heterogeneous nature of visually impaired people in interaction with their environmental context. Results from a previous study involving sighted participants were used for comparison. Results revealed that when describing a route, visually impaired people vary in their use of different types of navigation clues - both as a group, when compared with sighted participants, and as individuals. Usability implications and areas for further work are identified and discussed

Visualising Bluetooth interactions: combining the Arc Diagram and DocuBurst techniques

Within the Bluetooth mobile space, overwhelmingly large sets of interaction and encounter data can very quickly be accumulated. This presents a challenge to gaining an understanding and overview of the dataset as a whole. In order to overcome this problem, we have designed a visualisation which provides an informative overview of the dataset. The visualisation combines existing Arc Diagram and DocuBurst techniques into a radial space-filling layout capable of conveying a rich understanding of Bluetooth interaction data, and clearly represents social networks and relationships established among encountered devices. The end result enables a user to visually interpret the relative importance of individual devices encountered, the relationships established between them and the usage of Bluetooth 'friendly names' (or device labels) within the data

Bluetooth familiarity: methods of calculation, applications and limitations

We present an approach for utilising a mobile device’s Bluetooth sensor to automatically identify social interactions and relationships between individuals in the real world. We show that a high degree of accuracy is achievable in the automatic identification of mobile devices of familiar individuals. This has implications for mobile device security, social networking and in context aware information access on a mobile device