Age related cognitive impairments and assistive web-base technology

Several researchers argue that age related cognitive impairments have detrimental affect on use of web services by older adults. However little and systematic applied research has been conducted on how age related cognitive impairments might affect the usage of web services by older adults. Undoubtedly, understanding the relationship between the cognitive changes that accompany aging and their impact on older adults’ usage of web services will be beneficial for designing web services for this group. The paper demonstrates how such understanding has been employed to develop an assistive technology in order to improve older adults’ interaction with online forms

System Response Time and User Satisfaction: An Experimental Study of Browser-based Applications

With rapid advances in hardware speed and data communication bandwidth, one might not expect to have to deal with issues such as response time and system performance. But these issues remain a very real concern today. Lengthy system response times may cause lower satisfaction and poor productivity among users. Lowered user satisfaction may lead to discontinued use of an application, especially in discretionary applications such as those found on the Internet. The intent of this experimental research is to (1) substantiate that slow system response time leads to dissatisfaction; (2) assess the point at which users may become dissatisfied with system response time; (3) determine a threshold at which dissatisfaction may lead to discontinued use of the application, and (4) determine if experience influences response time tolerance. The results showed that indeed satisfaction does decrease as response time increases. However, instant response was not perceived as making the system easier to use or learn. It also showed that for discretionary applications, there appears to be a level of intolerance in the 12-second response range

Informatics and Society: The Challenge of Improving IT Accessibility

ABSTRACT Information technology (IT) is an important part of society and has assumed an increasing role in education, medicine, commercial, leisure, and sociopolitical applications. However, while progress in developing IT hardware and software has advanced, our understanding of user needs and how these needs can be translated into more accessible and effective system design lags behind. The challenge that we face is rooted in the fact that many individuals across this planet who are differently-abled due to aging, developmental or neurologic conditions or to individual differences in learning, face obstacles in using and accessing IT. The central thesis of this paper is that the effective delivery of IT to the differently-abled is contingent on deriving enough information about user populations to allow for the development and use of personalized interfaces and customized content. To this end, it is proposed that a combination of adaptive hypermedia and cognitive adaptive strategies integrating metadata architecture for representing the results of cognitive and functional assessments be designed and implemented

Age, Technology Usage, and Cognitive Characteristics in Relation to Perceived Disorientation and Reported Website Ease of Use

Comparative studies including older and younger adults are becoming more common in HCI, generally used to compare how these two different age groups will approach a task. However, it is unclear whether user 'age' is the underlying factor that differentiates between these two groups. To address this problem, an examination into the relationship between users' age, previous technology experience, and cognitive characteristics is conducted. Measures of perceived disorientation and reported ease of use are used to understand links that exist between these user characteristics and their effect on browsing experience. This is achieved through a lab-based information retrieval task, where participants visited a selection of websites in order to find answers to a series of questions and then self reported their feelings of perceived disorientation and website ease of use through a Likert-scored questionnaire. The presented research found that age accounts for as little as 1% of user browsing experience when performing information retrieval tasks. Further, it showed that cognitive ability and previous technology experience significantly affected perceived disorientation in these searches. These results argue for the inclusion of metrics regarding cognitive ability and previous technology experience when analyzing user satisfaction and performance in Internet based-studies

IT is never too late for changes? Analysing the relationship between process innovation, IT and older workers

The paper analyses the relationship between two major challenges firms are faced to: using the potentials of information technologies (IT) as an enabler of process innovations on the one hand and an ageing workforce that might interfere these potentials on the other hand. Econometric results based on firm-level data from the German manufacturing and service sectors reveal that firms with a higher IT-intensity are more likely to introduce new or improved processes. Older workers are harmful to the probability of process innovation based on IT. Leaving the negative relationship between older workers and the probability to innovate unaffected, IT-specific training for older workers is conducive to the realisation of process innovations. Thus, not older workers in general are harmful to firms' innovation capabilities, but older workers who lack the appropriate IT skills

Direct and Indirect Use of Information Systems in Organizations: An Empirical Investigation of System Usage in a Public Hospital

A user’s interaction with an Information System (IS) could transpire in two ways: direct and indirect. While most prior literature examines the direct interaction between a user and the system, few have examined and differentiated between direct and indirect use. In this study, we anchor on the theory of psychological attachment to study the effects of various external social factors on direct-usage and indirect-usage of an organizational IS. Survey results from 102 physicians in a public hospital reveal that punishment and informational influence are significantly related to direct-usage of the Electronic Medical Record System (EMRS) by physicians. Punishment and image are significantly associated with indirect-usage of EMRS

The Social Work Docuverse

The impact of electronic technology on social work has not been fundamental or transformative in any way comparable to the impact upon a variety of other professions and disciplines. A major potential impact of electronic systems for communications-based knowledge systems like social work lies in the area of textual processing systems which are only beginning to come to the fore. This article concentrates on one such set of technology -- hypermedia -- which already makes possible the construction and delivery of a social work docuverse which contains an electronic knowledge base of the field. Actual realization of such a web and exploration of the vast networks of linkages it implies will be an enormous task which should be the first major scholarly enterprise facing social welfare scholars in the new millennium. Several major problems must be overcome in creating such a vast undertaking include a number of critical organizational, legal, educational and political issues. The very nature of the emerging technology together with the inherited traditions of professional education make such a task inherently a matter of the common good of the profession

How does Cognitive Ability impact the use of Query Reformulation Moves?

People have different mental strengths and weakness, which can be measured according to cognitive ability. Learning about strengths and preferences in terms of search behavior, and looking for patterns between behaviors and cognitive abilities, creates the opportunity to make search tools and systems more effectively meet user needs and preferences. While we know that different cognitive abilities exist, and that people form and reform search queries in a variety of ways, we do not know how these two elements interact, or if the interaction is predictable or significant. This paper performs secondary analysis of data collected during a study of cognitive ability, adding in the element of query reformulation moves. It assesses the effect of these cognitive abilities on study participants' search formulation behaviors. Analysis showed that the most common search move was adding a concept to a query, followed by deleting concepts and manipulating search terms. Of the cognitive abilities, the only statistically significant differences between high and low groups were found in the visualization ability. Those in the high skill group made significantly more moves, and significantly more term manipulation moves, than their low skill counterparts.Master of Science in Information Scienc

Un dispositif de prévisualisation qui améliore la navigation : comparaison entre une tablette tactile et une souris 3 D.

International audienceC’est dans le cadre d’une action de recherche pluridisciplinaire (Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication, Psychologie, Ergonomie cognitive) que nous avons voulu vérifier l’hypothèse qu’un dispositif de prévisualisation pouvait améliorer les performances en recherche d’information pour des utilisateurs. L’objectif poursuivi est de tester une condition de prévisualisation en la déclinant sur une tablette tactile (expérience 1) et une souris 3 D incluant des fonctions de navigation modifiées (expérience 2). Deux modalités de recherche sont testées afin de pouvoir analyser les effets de ce dispositif. La première « normale » présente les caractéristiques classiques de recherche, page par page sur un site Web. La seconde« plan » permet de pré-visualiser les pages choisies et de ne sélectionner que les pages pertinentes avant affichage. Nous postulons que ce dispositif de prévisualisation devrait offrir une meilleure interaction entre l’utilisateur et le système et engendrer de meilleures performances (réduction du temps de recherche, diminution de la charge cognitive extrinsèque et amélioration de la charge utile en mémoire). Nous avons demandé à un échantillon de cinquante étudiants et quarante personnes âgées, de trouver un logement cible dans le cadre d’une tâche de recherche d’information. Les variables indépendantes manipulées sont le type de modalité, l’âge, et la complexité de la recherche (variable intra-groupe). Les variables dépendantes sont le temps de recherche, le nombre de consultations de la consigne, le nombre de pages consultées et le score du questionnaire Nasa Tlx. Des effetssignificatifs sont observés sur les deux supports (tablette tactile et souris 3 D) avec des améliorations notables liées à la condition de prévisualisation

Consumer preferences for the design of a demand response quota scheme – Results of a choice experiment in Germany

Demand response (DR) programs are increasingly discussed as policy options to facilitate an efficient energy transition. More recently, quota schemes, a novel type of incentive-based DR program that aims to restrict electricity consumption of some household appliances at certain times, have received considerable attention as a tool for preventing local grid congestion. However, little is known about the preferences of household consumers regarding the design of DR programs in general and quota schemes in particular. We examined the preferences of 1034 German consumers using data from a choice experiment. Our model results show that respondents’ choices for quota scheme designs are mainly driven by the time period during which consumption is constrained, followed by the financial compensation. That said, the order of importance reverses if consumers are free to choose whether to participate or not, while the frequency and duration of DR measures remain unimportant. This shift in preferences suggests that preferences for certain DR programs may not necessarily translate into willingness to participate. Sociodemographic characteristics explain these preferences only to a limited extent, with female and older persons and persons currently purchasing green electricity showing a slightly higher willingness to participate. We discuss policy implications arising from these findings