Development and Usability Evaluation of an mHealth Application for Symptom Self-Management in Underserved Persons Living with HIV

Effective symptom management is essential to decrease symptom severity and improve health-related quality of life for persons living with HIV (PLWH). A mobile health (mHealth) application (app) has the potential to be an effective delivery mode of an existing paper-based symptom management manual with self-management strategies for underserved PLWH. The quality of the mHealth app requires a thorough understanding of the needs of the intended end-users and ensuring the app’s usability. The purpose of this study was to translate paper-based health information into an mHealth app for symptom self-management in underserved PLWH, entitled mVIP (mobile Video Information Provider), and assess its usability. To achieve this goal, usability was evaluated rigorously throughout the development process of mVIP. Based on a stratified view of health information technology (IT) usability evaluation framework, usability evaluation was sequentially conducted with the following three levels: 1) user-task, 2) user-task-system, and 3) user-task-system-environment. At level 1 (user-task), we applied a user-centered design method to guide the information architecture of mVIP. Using a reverse in-person card sorting technique, symptoms and self-management strategies from a paper-based HIV/AIDS symptom management manual were ranked. The rank order of the 13 symptoms and 151 self-management strategies determined the order of appearance to end-users of the mVIP app, with higher-ranked symptoms and strategies appearing first. Based on the findings, we developed a prototype of mVIP as following: 1) once users log in, they are guided by an avatar through a series of 13 symptom questions ascertaining the nature and severity of their symptoms, and 2) the avatar recommends three self-management strategies for each symptom reported. At level 2 (user-task-system), we conducted a usability evaluation of the mVIP prototype in a laboratory setting through end-user usability testing and heuristic evaluation. In end-user usability testing, we used an eye-tracking and retrospective think-aloud method to examine task performance by 20 PLWH. For the heuristic evaluation, five usability experts in informatics assessed the user interface. In the two usability evaluations conducted in a laboratory setting, we found strong user acceptance of the mVIP prototype while identifying a number of usability issues with this prototype. Based on the recommendations from the end-users and heuristic evaluators, we iteratively refined the app’s content, functionality, and interface. We then inserted videos of the finalized symptom self-management strategies into the refined mVIP prototype. At level 3 (user-task-system-environment), the usability of the refined mVIP prototype was evaluated in a real-world setting. Through 10 in-depth interviews and four focus groups conducted at the conclusion of a three-month randomized controlled trial, we explored in-depth understandings of users’ experiences, perceptions, and satisfaction of mVIP use. Findings from the study showed that first, mVIP is useful for HIV-related symptom self-management and has the potential for being used as a communication tool with healthcare providers; and second, mVIP is easy to use to monitor symptom experience over time. At the same time, participants suggested mVIP be more sensitively tailored based on years from initial diagnosis of HIV, an individuals’ age, and conditions. The overall user satisfaction with the mVIP prototype was high, which reflects strong user acceptance of mVIP. Integral to the findings from the three-level usability evaluation, we assessed the quality of the mVIP prototype in use and found the prototype was highly accepted by PLWH with high user satisfaction. This study will add to the body of literature on translation of evidence-based health information into an mHealth app and its usability assessment, which highlights the importance of the use of mobile technology for PLWH, specifically racial and ethnic minorities and those from low-socioeconomic groups who have limited health literacy and low level of education

VisDA 2022 Challenge: Domain Adaptation for Industrial Waste Sorting

Label-efficient and reliable semantic segmentation is essential for many real-life applications, especially for industrial settings with high visual diversity, such as waste sorting. In industrial waste sorting, one of the biggest challenges is the extreme diversity of the input stream depending on factors like the location of the sorting facility, the equipment available in the facility, and the time of year, all of which significantly impact the composition and visual appearance of the waste stream. These changes in the data are called ``visual domains'', and label-efficient adaptation of models to such domains is needed for successful semantic segmentation of industrial waste. To test the abilities of computer vision models on this task, we present the VisDA 2022 Challenge on Domain Adaptation for Industrial Waste Sorting. Our challenge incorporates a fully-annotated waste sorting dataset, ZeroWaste, collected from two real material recovery facilities in different locations and seasons, as well as a novel procedurally generated synthetic waste sorting dataset, SynthWaste. In this competition, we aim to answer two questions: 1) can we leverage domain adaptation techniques to minimize the domain gap? and 2) can synthetic data augmentation improve performance on this task and help adapt to changing data distributions? The results of the competition show that industrial waste detection poses a real domain adaptation problem, that domain generalization techniques such as augmentations, ensembling, etc., improve the overall performance on the unlabeled target domain examples, and that leveraging synthetic data effectively remains an open problem. See https://ai.bu.edu/visda-2022/Comment: Proceedings of Machine Learning Researc

Evaluation of the Perceived Persuasiveness Questionnaire:User-Centered Card-Sort Study

Background: eHealth technologies aim to change users’ health-related behavior. Persuasive design and system features can make an eHealth technology more motivating, engaging, or supportive to its users. The Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) model incorporates software features that have the possibility to increase the persuasiveness of technologies. However, the effects of specific PSD software features on the effectiveness of an intervention are still largely unknown. The Perceived Persuasiveness Questionnaire (PPQ) was developed to gain insight into the working mechanisms of persuasive technologies. Although the PPQ seems to be a suitable method for measuring subjective persuasiveness, it needs to be further evaluated to determine how suitable it is for measuring perceived persuasiveness among the public. Objective: This study aims to evaluate the face and construct validity of the PPQ, identify points of improvement, and provide suggestions for further development of the PPQ. Methods: A web-based closed-ended card-sort study was performed wherein participants grouped existing PPQ items under existing PPQ constructs. Participants were invited via a Massive Open Online Course on eHealth. A total of 398 people (average age 44.15 years, SD 15.17; 251/398, 63.1% women) completed the card sort. Face validity was evaluated by determining the item-level agreement of the original PPQ constructs. Construct validity was evaluated by determining the construct in which each item was placed most often, regardless of the original placement and how often 2 items were (regardless of the constructs) paired together and what interitem correlations were according to a cluster analysis. Results: Four PPQ constructs obtained relatively high face validity scores: perceived social support, use continuance, perceived credibility, and perceived effort. Item-level agreement on the other constructs was relatively low. Item-level agreement for almost all constructs, except perceived effort and perceived effectiveness, would increase if items would be grouped differently. Finally, a cluster analysis of the PPQ indicated that the strengths of the newly identified 9 clusters varied strongly. Unchanged strong clusters were only found for perceived credibility support, perceived social support, and use continuance. The placement of the other items was much more spread out over the other constructs, suggesting an overlap between them. Conclusions: The findings of this study provide a solid starting point toward a redesigned PPQ that is a true asset to the field of persuasiveness research. To achieve this, we advocate that the redesigned PPQ should adhere more closely to what persuasiveness is according to the PSD model and to the mental models of potential end users of technology. The revised PPQ should, for example, enquire if the user thinks anything is done to provide task support but not how this is done exactly

Communicating about Extreme Heat: Results from Card Sorting and Think Aloud Interviews with Experts from Differing Domains

Climate trends indicate that extreme heat events are becoming more common and more severe over time, requiring improved strategies to communicate heat risk and protective actions. However, there exists a disconnect in heat-related communication from experts, who commonly include heat related jargon (i.e., technical language), to decision makers and the general public. The use of jargon has been shown to reduce meaningful engagement with and understanding of messages written by experts. Translating technical language into comprehensible messages that encourage decision makers to take action has been identified as a priority to enable impact-based decision support. Knowing what concepts and terms are perceived as jargon, and why, is a first step to increasing communication effectiveness. With this in mind, we focus on the mental models about extreme heat among two groups of domain experts –those trained in atmospheric science and those trained in emergency management to identify how each group understands terms and concepts about extreme heat. We use a hybrid data collection method of open card sorting and think-aloud interviews to identify how participants conceptualize and categorize terms and concepts related to extreme heat. While we find few differences within the sorted categories, we learn that the processes leading to decisions about the importance of including, or not including, technical information differs by group. The results lead to recommendations and priorities for communicating about extreme heat

A mobile tour guide app for sustainable tourism

Portugal has had a flourishing tourism sector for the past few years. In fact, Portugal’s tourism boom has made the industry one of the biggest contributors to the national economy and the largest employer. In the year 2019, Portugal had a total of 27 million tourists, surpassing once again the record established in the previous year. However, tourism also brings a series of unintended negative side effects, such as overcrowding. The Santa Maria Maior historic district in Lisbon is being particularly affected by this problem. The work undertaken in this dissertation is part of the Sustainable Tourism Crowding project, that aims to mitigate the overcrowding phenomenon in this district, by fostering a balanced distribution of visitors while promoting the visitation of sustainable points of interest. This dissertation focuses on developing a mobile app prototype targeted at tourists, through which these sustainable walking tour recommendations can be delivered. To validate the functional requirements of the prototype, more specifically the trip creation process, a series of unit tests, integration tests, and manual tests were developed. To evaluate the usability of the prototype, a user-centered approach was adopted during the design stage, in which two usability techniques were conducted with members of ISCTE’s research center ISTAR and partners from the Junta de Freguesia de Santa Maria Maior, that guided and validated the decisions made. The achieved prototype contains mechanisms for measuring tourists’ adherence to the recommended tours using the Dynamic Time Warping algorithm, which raises new research opportunities on tourists’ behaviour.O desenvolvimento próspero do setor turístico em Portugal nos últimos anos fez da indústria um dos maiores contribuintes para a economia nacional e o maior empregador do país. No ano de 2019, Portugal recebeu um total de 27 milhões de turistas, ultrapassando uma vez mais uma vez o recorde estabelecido no ano anterior. No entanto, o turismo traz também uma série de efeitos secundários negativos não intencionais, tais como overcrowding. A freguesia histórica de Santa Maria Maior em Lisboa está a ser particularmente afetada por este problema. O trabalho desenvolvido nesta dissertação faz parte do projeto de pesquisa Sustainable Tourism Crowding, que visa mitigar o fenómeno de overcrowding nesta freguesia, promovendo uma distribuição equilibrada dos visitantes e incentivando a visita de pontos de interesse sustentáveis. Esta dissertação foca-se no desenvolvimento de uma aplicação móvel protótipo destinada a turistas, através do qual recebem recomendações de visitas sustentáveis. Para validar os requisitos funcionais do protótipo, mais especificamente o processo de criação de visitas, foram desenvolvidos testes unitários, testes de integração, e testes manuais. Para avaliar a usabilidade do protótipo, foi adotada uma abordagem centrada no utilizador durante a fase de conceção, em que foram utilizadas duas técnicas de usabilidade em parceria com o ISTAR (centro de investigação do ISCTE) e com a Junta de Freguesia de Santa Maria Maior, cujos resultados guiaram e validaram as decisões tomadas. O protótipo desenvolvido contém mecanismos para medir a aderência dos turistas às recomendações sugeridas através do algoritmo Dynamic Time Warping, proporcionando novas oportunidades de pesquisa nesta área

Processo de Seleção de Participantes numa Plataforma de Testes de Usabilidade

With the exponential growth of web and mobile applications, the practice of usability tests began to be more prevalent in different organizations and revealed a positive impact on the empathy of their products with the intended users. Skipping this step can cause major usability issues on the final product, as it was not tested with its users before it was launched. Despite companies realizing the importance of user testing and starting to make use of it, this task requires participants who are willing to participate in the tests, and this aspect is often a major obstacle for UX (User eXperience) researchers, not only in terms of their recruitment but also the suitability of the participants’ attributes to the product to be created. The aim of this project is to develop a web application that unifies the steps present in carrying out usability tests, from their creation to their execution, with a special focus on the selection of participants for them, which is the main problem to be solved. The hypothesis of research here is to confirm that using other platforms' APIs (Application Programming Interface) to recruit testers for usability tests is an efficient way of finding testers from a wide variety of market niches, which we will confirm or deny by the end of the project. In the project's initial phase, it is intended to study the state of the art in order to bring to light deeper understandings of the UX field and usability testing, as well as current applications on the market for usability testing management and potential technologies for this project’s development. Then, possible solutions for approaching the problem will be described, and a value analysis will be carried out focusing on strategic and business concepts for the project, namely its value proposition. In this stage, it is intended to choose a solution for the problem, taking into account factors such as time, adequation, and complexity of each one. As a result of the previous steps, an initial concept for the UI (User Interface) of the chosen solution will be sketched, and its usability will be tested in order to find any issues and fix them before going on to the final design. After this phase, the solution will be implemented, and the technique for doing so, including the technology used, the code architecture and documentation, will be described. Accordingly, the project will be experimented and evaluated again after its implementation phase, in order to assess the effectiveness of its requirements’ execution and potential problems the testers may have run into, which we will have to analyze and consider fixing at a later stage. At last, thorough conclusions about the project will be held out, including those regarding the challenges and limitations faced, achieved objectives, and, lastly, the work to be developed in the future.Com o crescimento das aplicações web e mobile, a prática de testes de usabilidade começou a estar mais presente nas diversas organizações e revelou um impacto positivo na empatia dos seus produtos com os utilizadores a que se destinam. Saltar esta etapa pode causar grandes problemas de usabilidade no produto final, já que não foi testado com o público-alvo antes de ser lançado. Apesar das empresas perceberem a importância de testes de usabilidade e começarem a fazer uso deste método, estes testes requerem participantes que estejam dispostos a participarem nos mesmos (conhecidos como avaliadores ou, em inglês, testers), sendo este aspeto, muitas vezes, um grande obstáculo para os investigadores na área de UX (User eXperience), não só no que toca à sua procura, como também à adequação dos atributos destes ao produto a criar. O objetivo deste projeto é desenvolver uma aplicação web que unifique as etapas presentes na realização de testes de usabilidade, desde a sua criação à sua execução, com um foco especial na seleção de participantes para os mesmos, sendo este o problema a resolver. A aplicação terá as suas funcionalidades principais para criação e partilha dos testes, assim como seleção de participantes para os mesmos, em funcionamento, podendo, futuramente, ser desenvolvida na sua totalidade, isto é, com a presença de mais funcionalidades extra, úteis para a realização destes testes. A hipótese de investigação aqui é confirmar que usar APIs (Application Programming Interface) de outras plataformas para recrutar avaliadores para testes de usabilidade é uma forma eficiente de encontrar testers dos mais diversos nichos de mercado, o que iremos confirmar ou negar no final do projeto. Na fase inicial do projeto, pretende-se estudar o estado da arte de forma a obter conhecimentos mais aprofundados sobre a área de UX e testes de usabilidade (respondendose, para isso, a questões como: o que é UX Design, o que é usability testing e qual a sua importância; que tipos de testes de usabilidade existem; quando se conduzem; quantos participantes são necessários; entre outras questões), bem como perceber as aplicações atualmente existentes no mercado para gestão destes testes (percebendo quem é a nossa concorrência e que funcionalidades é que oferecem nas suas aplicações, identificando-se também a nossa oportunidade), e, por fim, potenciais tecnologias para o desenvolvimento deste projeto (incluindo possíveis APIs de aplicações externas que poderão ser usadas para procura de avaliadores). Em seguida, serão pleaneadas possíveis soluções para a abordagem do problema, incluindo-se uma solução completa (que não será implementada neste projeto devido à sua complexidade e tempo que exige), e três outras soluções simplificadas possíveis de serem implementadas, permitindo, caso haja algum imprevisto na fase de desenvolvimento que impossibilite a implementação da solução escolhida a tempo, a implementação de uma outra solução aqui especificada, visto que estas variam no número de requisitos que exigem. Será ainda realizada uma análise de valor com foco nos conceitos estratégicos e de negócio do projeto, nomeadamente a oportunidade, uma análise SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Oppurtunities, Threats), proposta de valor, modelo de negócio, e os requisitos a ter em conta para satisfazer os desejos dos clientes, através de uma técnica denominada Quality Function Deployment (QFD). Nesta etapa, pretende-se também escolher uma solução para o problema, levando em consideração fatores como tempo, adequação e complexidade de cada uma. Para isso, será utilizado o método de Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Como resultado das etapas anteriores, será desenhada a solução para o problema. Em primeiro lugar, serão definidos os tipos de utilizador que poderão registar-se na aplicação, esboçando também um mapa de navegação distinto para cada um destes. Em segundo lugar, será esboçado um conceito inicial para o UI (User Interface) da solução escolhida, onde será depois conduzido um teste de usabilidade – System Usability Scale (SUS) – para que se possam identificar e corrigir problemas antes da sua versão final. Na versão final do design será também construída uma identidade visual, escolhendo-se um nome para a aplicação e desenhando-se o seu logótipo, definindo-se também a paleta de cores e tipografia a utilizar, mantendo coerência ao longo das páginas da aplicação. Após esta fase, a solução será implementada: será escolhida e fundamentada a tecnologia a utilizar; será descrito o processo de implementação, nomeadamente a definição de requisitos e a utilização de um sistema de controlo de versões; será explicada a arquitetura do código e a sua respetiva documentação, com foco em casos especiais do projeto; e, por último, será disponibilizada a aplicação final. Assim, o projeto será novamente experimentado e avaliado após a sua fase de implementação, de forma a classificar-se o sucesso da implementação dos seus requisitos e potenciais problemas que os testers possam ter encontrado, os quais terão de ser analisados e ponderados para corrigir numa fase posterior. Para isto, será utilizado um QEF (Quantitative Evaluation Framework) e um formulário de feedback, por forma a obtermos uma avaliação quantitativa e qualitativa da aplicação desenvolvida. Por último, serão tiradas conclusões aprofundadas sobre o projeto, incluindo as relativas aos desafios e limitações enfrentados, objetivos alcançados (focando-nos também em justificar a hipótese apresentada) e, por último, o trabalho a desenvolver-se no futuro

DDoS hive comb: An IP stresser made by the community

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Informàtica, Facultat de Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2021, Director: Raúl Roca Cánovas[en] Denial of service attacks (or DoS attacks) consist of attacking a service on a server in order to temporarily interrupt the services of the host connected to the Internet. There are a wide variety of techniques and strategies that can be used to achieve this goal. This work aims to help these victims by creating an IP Stresser that allows the simulation of various DoS attacks. In this way, victims can check the stress capacity that their teams can handle and adapt different mitigation plans in various types of circumstances. The IP Stresser that will be developed in this project consists of a website accessible to everyone for free. The idea of this website is to try to create a community where with the help of other users a botnet can be created by means of a script that can be downloaded from this same website. Although this work is more focused on the practical part, we will try to explain briefly the structure of the Internet and how these attacks act and influence society