Methodological development

Book description: Human-Computer Interaction draws on the fields of computer science, psychology, cognitive science, and organisational and social sciences in order to understand how people use and experience interactive technology. Until now, researchers have been forced to return to the individual subjects to learn about research methods and how to adapt them to the particular challenges of HCI. This is the first book to provide a single resource through which a range of commonly used research methods in HCI are introduced. Chapters are authored by internationally leading HCI researchers who use examples from their own work to illustrate how the methods apply in an HCI context. Each chapter also contains key references to help researchers find out more about each method as it has been used in HCI. Topics covered include experimental design, use of eyetracking, qualitative research methods, cognitive modelling, how to develop new methodologies and writing up your research

Systematic evaluation of design choices for software development tools

[Abstract]: Most design and evaluation of software tools is based on the intuition and experience of the designers. Software tool designers consider themselves typical users of the tools that they build and tend to subjectively evaluate their products rather than objectively evaluate them using established usability methods. This subjective approach is inadequate if the quality of software tools is to improve and the use of more systematic methods is advocated. This paper summarises a sequence of studies that show how user interface design choices for software development tools can be evaluated using established usability engineering techniques. The techniques used included guideline review, predictive modelling and experimental studies with users

Natural user interfaces for interdisciplinary design review using the Microsoft Kinect

As markets demand engineered products faster, waiting on the cyclical design processes of the past is not an option. Instead, industry is turning to concurrent design and interdisciplinary teams. When these teams collaborate, engineering CAD tools play a vital role in conceptualizing and validating designs. These tools require significant user investment to master, due to challenging interfaces and an overabundance of features. These challenges often prohibit team members from using these tools for exploring designs. This work presents a method allowing users to interact with a design using intuitive gestures and head tracking, all while keeping the model in a CAD format. Specifically, Siemens\u27 Teamcenter® Lifecycle Visualization Mockup (Mockup) was used to display design geometry while modifications were made through a set of gestures captured by a Microsoft KinectTM in real time. This proof of concept program allowed a user to rotate the scene, activate Mockup\u27s immersive menu, move the immersive wand, and manipulate the view based on head position. This work also evaluates gesture usability and task completion time for this proof of concept system. A cognitive model evaluation method was used to evaluate the premise that gesture-based user interfaces are easier to use and learn with regards to time than a traditional mouse and keyboard interface. Using a cognitive model analysis tool allowed the rapid testing of interaction concepts without the significant overhead of user studies and full development cycles. The analysis demonstrated that using the KinectTM is a feasible interaction mode for CAD/CAE programs. In addition, the analysis pointed out limitations in the gesture interfaces ability to compete time wise with easily accessible customizable menu options

Applying quantitative models to evaluate complexity in video game systems

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 41).This thesis proposes a games evaluation model that reports significant statistics about the complexity of a game's various systems. Quantitative complexity measurements allow designers to make accurate decisions about how to manage challenge, keeping in mind the player's physical and mental resources and the amount/type of actions the game requires players to act upon. Managing the operational challenge is critical to keeping players in a state of enjoyment, the primary purpose of video games. This thesis first investigates the relationship between enjoyment and complexity through the concept of Flow. From there it examines the properties of GOMS that are useful to analyzing videogames using Tetris as a case study, and then it examines and dissects the shortcomings of a direct usability approach and offers solutions based on a strategy game example. A third case study of the idle worker scenario in strategy games is detailed to further corroborate the usefulness of applying a GOMS based analysis to videogames. Using quantitative measurements of complexity, future research can aggressively tackle difficulty and challenge precisely, mitigate complexity to widen market appeal, and even reveal new genre possibilities.by Matthew Tanwanteng.M.Eng

An Ontology And Constraint-based Approach For Dynamic Personalised Planning In Healthcare

Para doktor atau pakar kesihatan semestinya mengambil berat berkenaan pengemaskinian rekod atau profil pesakit mereka Healthcare service providers are undoubtedly concerned about updating their patients’ health records or profile

An Overview of Personalized Recommendation System to Improve Web Navigation

We present a new personalized recommendation system, which means the searches of each user is done according to their interest which is based on ranking or preference method. It also maintains the logs which records the sessions of each user and brings out the exact data required by the user. This is done by fetching the data that is already stored in the database. Web server logs maintains history of page results and consists of a log file which automatically creates and maintains the list of activities performed by the users. For extracting the data according to the user’s previous searches, we are using Stemming Algorithm. The Stemming Algorithm is a process where the exact, meaningful words are extracted from the URL. Because of this process the user’s search time will be reduced. It also improves the quality of web navigation and overcomes the limitation of existing system. In the proposed system we extract user’s behaviour from web server logs in the actual process whereas, in the anticipated system, the user’s behaviour is done with the help of cognitive user model and we perform the comparison between the two usage processes. The data produced from this comparison can help the users to discover usability issues and take actions to improve usability. In the anticipated usage the cognitive user model is done that can be used to simulate or predict human behaviour or by performance and task. Finally, the system is executed by using the top-k ranking algorithm. The advantage of this system are accuracy and better processing speed. The user’s convenience deals with the ease of navigation which helps the users to interact with their interface