Investigating the effectiveness of an efficient label placement method using eye movement data

This paper focuses on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of dynamic and interactive maps in relation to the user. A label placement method with an improved algorithmic efficiency is presented. Since this algorithm has an influence on the actual placement of the name labels on the map, it is tested if this efficient algorithms also creates more effective maps: how well is the information processed by the user. We tested 30 participants while they were working on a dynamic and interactive map display. Their task was to locate geographical names on each of the presented maps. Their eye movements were registered together with the time at which a given label was found. The gathered data reveal no difference in the user's response times, neither in the number and the duration of the fixations between both map designs. The results of this study show that the efficiency of label placement algorithms can be improved without disturbing the user's cognitive map. Consequently, we created a more efficient map without affecting its effectiveness towards the user

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Designing Attentive Information Dashboards

Information dashboards are a critical capability in contemporary business intelligence and analytics systems. Despite their strong potential to support better decision-making, the massive amount of information they provide challenges users performing data exploration tasks. Accordingly, dashboard users face difficulties in managing their limited attentional resources when processing the presented information on dashboards. Also, studies have shown that the amount of concentrated time humans can spend on a task has dramatically decreased in recent years; thus, there is a need for designing user interfaces that support users attention management. In this design science research project, we propose attentive information dashboards that provide individualized visual attention feedback (VAF) as an innovative artifact to solve this problem. We articulate theoretically grounded design principles and instantiate a software artifact leveraging users eye movement data in real time to provide individualized VAF. We evaluated the instantiated artifact in a controlled lab experiment with 92 participants. The results from analyzing users eye movement after receiving individualized VAF reveal that our proposed design has a positive effect on users attentional resource allocation, attention shift rate, and attentional resource management. We contribute a system architecture for attentive information dashboards that support data exploration and two theoretically grounded design principles that provide prescriptive knowledge on how to provide individualized VAF. Practitioners can leverage the prescriptive knowledge derived from our research to design innovative systems that support users information processing by managing their limited attentional resources

A survey of comics research in computer science

Graphical novels such as comics and mangas are well known all over the world. The digital transition started to change the way people are reading comics, more and more on smartphones and tablets and less and less on paper. In the recent years, a wide variety of research about comics has been proposed and might change the way comics are created, distributed and read in future years. Early work focuses on low level document image analysis: indeed comic books are complex, they contains text, drawings, balloon, panels, onomatopoeia, etc. Different fields of computer science covered research about user interaction and content generation such as multimedia, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, etc. with different sets of values. We propose in this paper to review the previous research about comics in computer science, to state what have been done and to give some insights about the main outlooks

Opportunities for using eye tracking technology in manufacturing and logistics: Systematic literature review and research agenda

Workers play essential roles in manufacturing and logistics. Releasing workers from routine tasks and enabling them to focus on creative, value-adding activities can enhance their performance and wellbeing, and it is also key to the successful implementation of Industry 4.0. One technology that can help identify patterns of worker-system interaction is Eye Tracking (ET), which is a non-intrusive technology for measuring human eye movements. ET can provide moment-by-moment insights into the cognitive state of the subject during task execution, which can improve our understanding of how humans behave and make decisions within complex systems. It also enables explorations of the subject’s interaction mode with the working environment. Earlier research has investigated the use of ET in manufacturing and logistics, but the literature is fragmented and has not yet been discussed in a literature review yet. This article therefore conducts a systematic literature review to explore the applications of ET, summarise its benefits, and outline future research opportunities of using ET in manufacturing and logistics. We first propose a conceptual framework to guide our study and then conduct a systematic literature search in scholarly databases, obtaining 71 relevant papers. Building on the proposed framework, we systematically review the use of ET and categorize the identified papers according to their application in manufacturing (product development, production, quality inspection) and logistics. Our results reveal that ET has several use cases in the manufacturing sector, but that its application in logistics has not been studied extensively so far. We summarize the benefits of using ET in terms of process performance, human performance, and work environment and safety, and also discuss the methodological characteristics of the ET literature as well as typical ET measures used. We conclude by illustrating future avenues for ET research in manufacturing and logistics