Reviewing and extending the five-user assumption: A grounded procedure for interaction evaluation

" © ACM, 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), {VOL 20, ISS 5, (November 2013)} http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2506210 "The debate concerning how many participants represents a sufficient number for interaction testing is well-established and long-running, with prominent contributions arguing that five users provide a good benchmark when seeking to discover interaction problems. We argue that adoption of five users in this context is often done with little understanding of the basis for, or implications of, the decision. We present an analysis of relevant research to clarify the meaning of the five-user assumption and to examine the way in which the original research that suggested it has been applied. This includes its blind adoption and application in some studies, and complaints about its inadequacies in others. We argue that the five-user assumption is often misunderstood, not only in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, but also in fields such as medical device design, or in business and information applications. The analysis that we present allows us to define a systematic approach for monitoring the sample discovery likelihood, in formative and summative evaluations, and for gathering information in order to make critical decisions during the interaction testing, while respecting the aim of the evaluation and allotted budget. This approach – which we call the ‘Grounded Procedure’ – is introduced and its value argued.The MATCH programme (EPSRC Grants: EP/F063822/1 EP/G012393/1

Applying a User-centred Approach to Interactive Visualization Design

Analysing users in their context of work and finding out how and why they use different information resources is essential to provide interactive visualisation systems that match their goals and needs. Designers should actively involve the intended users throughout the whole process. This chapter presents a user-centered approach for the design of interactive visualisation systems. We describe three phases of the iterative visualisation design process: the early envisioning phase, the global specification hase, and the detailed specification phase. The whole design cycle is repeated until some criterion of success is reached. We discuss different techniques for the analysis of users, their tasks and domain. Subsequently, the design of prototypes and evaluation methods in visualisation practice are presented. Finally, we discuss the practical challenges in design and evaluation of collaborative visualisation environments. Our own case studies and those of others are used throughout the whole chapter to illustrate various approaches

Development of bambangan (Mangifera pajang) carbonated drink

Mangifera pajang Kostermans or bambangan is a popular fruit among Sabahan due to its health and economic values. However, the fruit is not fully commercialized since it is usually been used as traditional cuisine by local people. Thus, development of bambangan fruit into carbonated drink was conducted to produce new product concept. The objectives of this study were to conceptualize, formulate, evaluate consumer acceptance, and determine physicochemical properties and nutritional composition of the accepted product. Method used in conceptualising the product was based on questionnaire. The consumer acceptance was evaluated based on descriptive and affective tests with four product formulations tested. The physicochemical properties on carbon dioxide volume, colour, pH, total acidity, total soluble solid (TSS) and viscosity were highlighted, meanwhile nutritional composition on fat, protein, carbohydrates and energy content were determined. About 77% respondents gave positive feedback, and 69% respondents decided this product is within their budget. The formulation of 5% bambangan pulp, 70% water, 25% sugar and 0.2% citric acid was highly accepted in descriptive and affective tests with 4.4 and 6.39 mean scores, respectively. The physicochemical properties and nutritional composition of the acceptance product were in optimum value except for colour, total acidity and TSS. Overall, this study showed that the product has high potential to be commercialized as new product concept, and heritage of indigenous people can be preserved when this fruit is known regionally

MOSDEN: A Scalable Mobile Collaborative Platform for Opportunistic Sensing Applications

Mobile smartphones along with embedded sensors have become an efficient enabler for various mobile applications including opportunistic sensing. The hi-tech advances in smartphones are opening up a world of possibilities. This paper proposes a mobile collaborative platform called MOSDEN that enables and supports opportunistic sensing at run time. MOSDEN captures and shares sensor data across multiple apps, smartphones and users. MOSDEN supports the emerging trend of separating sensors from application-specific processing, storing and sharing. MOSDEN promotes reuse and re-purposing of sensor data hence reducing the efforts in developing novel opportunistic sensing applications. MOSDEN has been implemented on Android-based smartphones and tablets. Experimental evaluations validate the scalability and energy efficiency of MOSDEN and its suitability towards real world applications. The results of evaluation and lessons learned are presented and discussed in this paper.Comment: Accepted to be published in Transactions on Collaborative Computing, 2014. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1310.405

Domino: exploring mobile collaborative software adaptation

Social Proximity Applications (SPAs) are a promising new area for ubicomp software that exploits the everyday changes in the proximity of mobile users. While a number of applications facilitate simple file sharing between co–present users, this paper explores opportunities for recommending and sharing software between users. We describe an architecture that allows the recommendation of new system components from systems with similar histories of use. Software components and usage histories are exchanged between mobile users who are in proximity with each other. We apply this architecture in a mobile strategy game in which players adapt and upgrade their game using components from other players, progressing through the game through sharing tools and history. More broadly, we discuss the general application of this technique as well as the security and privacy challenges to such an approach

SPAD: a distributed middleware architecture for QoS enhanced alternate path discovery

In the next generation Internet, the network will evolve from a plain communication medium into one that provides endless services to the users. These services will be composed of multiple cooperative distributed application elements. We name these services overlay applications. The cooperative application elements within an overlay application will build a dynamic communication mesh, namely an overlay association. The Quality of Service (QoS) perceived by the users of an overlay application greatly depends on the QoS experienced on the communication paths of the corresponding overlay association. In this paper, we present SPAD (Super-Peer Alternate path Discovery), a distributed middleware architecture that aims at providing enhanced QoS between end-points within an overlay association. To achieve this goal, SPAD provides a complete scheme to discover and utilize composite alternate end-to end paths with better QoS than the path given by the default IP routing mechanisms