Usability of the Stylus Pen in Mobile Electronic Documentation

Stylus pens are often used with mobile information devices. However, few studies have examined the stylus’ simple movements because the technical expertise to support documentation with stylus pens has not been developed. This study examined the usability of stylus pens in authentic documentation tasks, including three main tasks (sentence, table, and paragraph making) with two types of styluses (touchsmart stylus and mobile stylus) and a traditional pen. The statistical results showed that participants preferred the traditional pen in all criteria. Because of inconvenient hand movements, the mobile stylus was the least preferred on every task. Mobility does not provide any advantage in using the stylus. In addition, the study also found inconvenient hand support using a stylus and different feedback between a stylus and a traditional pen.This study was supported by the Dongguk University Research Fund of 2015. Support for the University Jaume-I (UJI) Robotic Intelligence Laboratory is provided in part by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (DPI2011-27846), by Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEOII/2014/028) and by Universitat Jaume I (P1-1B2014-52)

A comparative evaluation of touch and pen gestures for adult and child users

In this paper, we present results of two user studies that compared the performance of touch-based and pen-based gesture input on capacitive touchscreens for both adult and 8-11 years old child users. Results showed that inputting gestures with pen was significantly faster and more accurate than touch for adult users. However, no significant effect of input method was observed on performance for child users. Similarly, user experience evaluation showed that a large number of adult users favoured one technique over the other and/or found a technique more comfortable to use than the other, while child users were mostly neutral. This trend, however, was not statistically significant.CIEC – Research Centre on Child Studies, IE, UMinho (FCT R&D unit 317), Portuga

Mobile Usability in Educational Contexts: What have we learnt?

The successful development of mobile learning is dependent on human factors in the use of new mobile and wireless technologies. The majority of mobile learning activity continues to take place on devices that were not designed with educational applications in mind, and usability issues are often reported. The paper reflects on progress in approaches to usability and on recent developments, with particular reference to usability findings reported in studies of mobile learning. The requirements of education are considered as well as the needs of students participating in distance education; discipline-specific perspectives and accessibility issues are also addressed. Usability findings from empirical studies of mobile learning published in the literature are drawn together in the paper, along with an account of issues that emerged in two mobile learning projects based at The Open University, UK, in 2001 and 2005. The main conclusions are: that usability issues are often reported in cases where PDAs have been used; that the future is in scenario-based design which should also take into account the evolution of uses over time and the unpredictability of how devices might be used; and that usability issues should be tracked over a longer period, from initial use through to a state of relative experience with the technology

Mobile Usability and User Experience

The chapter locates mobile usability within the broader field of usability studies and identifies new factors that have to be taken into account when learners are using mobile devices. It goes on to discuss how usability affects teaching and learning, through an analysis of a dozen case studies of mobile-supported learning. Human needs in terms of cognitive and ergonomic challenges and contexts of use are discussed. The final part of the chapter considers the role of technical support

SymbolDesign: A User-centered Method to Design Pen-based Interfaces and Extend the Functionality of Pointer Input Devices

A method called "SymbolDesign" is proposed that can be used to design user-centered interfaces for pen-based input devices. It can also extend the functionality of pointer input devices such as the traditional computer mouse or the Camera Mouse, a camera-based computer interface. Users can create their own interfaces by choosing single-stroke movement patterns that are convenient to draw with the selected input device and by mapping them to a desired set of commands. A pattern could be the trace of a moving finger detected with the Camera Mouse or a symbol drawn with an optical pen. The core of the SymbolDesign system is a dynamically created classifier, in the current implementation an artificial neural network. The architecture of the neural network automatically adjusts according to the complexity of the classification task. In experiments, subjects used the SymbolDesign method to design and test the interfaces they created, for example, to browse the web. The experiments demonstrated good recognition accuracy and responsiveness of the user interfaces. The method provided an easily-designed and easily-used computer input mechanism for people without physical limitations, and, with some modifications, has the potential to become a computer access tool for people with severe paralysis.National Science Foundation (IIS-0093367, IIS-0308213, IIS-0329009, EIA-0202067

Are academics ready for smart learning?

Ownership of smartphones and tablets among the student population is growing. Students are using their devices to support their learning. Employers and employees are increasingly bringing their own smart devices into private and public organisations to support their business. This is leading to employees driving the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) agenda in organisations. It is not clear the extent to which academics are embracing smart technology to manage their workload or to enhance the student experience of learning. This paper presents a qualitative study of how engineering academics are using their own BYOD or institutionally provided smart devices. A 6Cs (connect, communicate, collaborate, curate, create and coordinate) framework has been used to analyse the results. The findings indicate that academics are primarily using devices to create materials, second to coordinate their work and third to communicate with students about their learning. However, there are a number of inhibiting and enabling factors that need to be addressed by academic institutions to develop the effective adoption of smart technologies for academic practice. Infrastructure, including developing widespread access to WiFi, and the prioritisation of opportunities to support staff to learn how to apply the technology to enhance student learning and experience are key areas of necessary development

Human Factors Guidance for the Use of Handheld, Portable, and Wearable Computing Devices

This report provides human factors guidance for the selection and use of handheld, portable, and wearable computing devices, including personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablet computers, and, to a more limited extent, head-mounted display systems. These devices are becoming more common in the workplace. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wanted to know if these devices would be beneficial to maintenance specialists. Human factors researchers from the William J. Hughes Technical Center were asked to identify the advantages and disadvantages of these devices. These systems require different usage guidelines than standard desktop computing systems because of their size, portability, human-computer interface (HCI) designs, and intended work environments. In this report, we discuss differences between different maintenance tasks and how these differences may affect the selection of an appropriate device. We summarize the advantages and disadvantages of common handheld, portable, and wearable systems, specifically focusing on areas such as device size, screen size and resolution, input method, one- or two-handed operation, and headsdown time