Population Stereotyped Icons: A Study of Agrarian Communities in India

Knowledge transfer is a key factor for increasing agriculture yield especially in developing countries like India. Information Communication Technologies (ICT) is the best platform for knowledge transfer. However, the expertise level of novice users living in India has compromised usage of ICT services. To fill the gap, we suggest for icons to be developed using population stereotype production method. In this study, we first generated population stereotype representations for sixteen different function labels. We then compared the performance and representativeness of these populationstereotyped icons with other ideas. Two separate experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, ninety-two participants from the farming communities were asked to draw images to represent sixteen function labels. In the second experiment, eighty-eight participants were equally distributed into four groups to evaluate the performance and representativeness of all the population-stereotyped representations. This study answered one of the most significant questions regarding the utility of using population-stereotyped ideas for the development of icons in the context of agrarian societies of rural India. The study also offered important practical implications for designing representative icons by using representations developed by different participants during population stereotype production

Understanding and conceptualising the adoption, use and diffusion of mobile banking in older adults: A research agenda and conceptual framework

Mobile banking has become increasingly important to society; however, not all members of society adopt and/or use it as much as others: older adults, the disabled and lower-income families remain behind in their use and adoption of this service. This finding helped us recognise a research gap and led us to form our primary aim: to understand and explain the factors that influence the adoption, use and diffusion of mobile banking among one of those groups in particular, older adults, in the UK. To form a theoretical understanding, this paper presents a comprehensive review of the surrounding literature in the area and proposes a conceptual framework that can be used for future research. The implications of this research for academia and businesses are also provided in this paper

Playing Video Games in Japanese: Motivation, Language Learning, and Navigation

This qualitative study explores the phenomenon of people who play Japanese video games but neither read, speak, nor understand Japanese. The research questions include: What motivates people to play a video game in a language they do not understand? What do people learn from playing games in a language they do not understand? How do they navigate the game without being able to understand the language? In the study, three participants were observed playing the Japanese action role-playing game Tales of Rebirth first released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 and then interviewed about their experiences. Data was summarized and then analyzed using a three-level approach based on grounded theory. The study showed that the participants played Japanese games due to the lack of comparable games in their native language. They were motivated by in-game rewards and may have been conditioned to succeed in the games through years of playing video games at home in their native languages. The participants learned little if any Japanese from playing these games; they could play the game and succeed at it without knowledge of the language. Participants leveraged prior experience with games to navigate through games in the absence of language because the gameplay was linear. Participants used trial and error as well as icon and character recognition to navigate the game. Although participants did not learn Japanese vocabulary, the evidence suggests they learned other skills, such as computer literacy and Japanese character recognition