Balch internet research and analysis tool development case study

The Internet has become increasing popular as a vehicle to deliver surveys. An essential objective of research is to collect accurate data and there has been little work to insure that Internet survey systems are employing best practices as defined by academic and professional research to collect data. My dissertation reviews the current literature relating to best practices in Internet survey design and best practices in software design and development. I then document the development and deployment of an Open Source and publicly licensed Internet survey system that allows researchers to easily create, deploy, and analyze the results of Internet surveys. The resultant Internet survey design product, the Balch Internet Research and Analysis Tool (http://birat.net) is a full-featured Internet survey system which addresses best Internet research practices as defined by academic and professional research. The system was designed and coded by the author and is considered by him to be both innovative and unique to the field. The dissertation then reviews the system features, describes how the system was deployed, and discusses the strategies used to increase use and adoption of the system

Passive visual behavior modifiers and consumer psychophysiology online.

Through an examination of the electroencephalography (EEG) data collected from 27 university students, this study examined the efficacy of three known passive visual behavior modifiers -- color, layout, and motion -- in an e-commerce environment. These three variables have significant scholarly support in the context of traditional media, but their effect online is still largely unsubstantiated. Using EEG readings taken from regions of interest Fp1 and Fp2, the researcher attempted to measure and compare sustained evoked response upon exposure to six fictitious e-commerce web pages, each exhibiting a different passive visual behavior modifier. It was hypothesized that (H1) a product in a subtle state of motion, (H2) a greater proportion of image to text, and (H3) a color system with a dominant wavelength of approximately 650nm would evoke higher average levels of amplitude (μV) and frequency (Hz) in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex compared to stimuli exhibiting inverse properties: a static product image, a greater proportion of text to image, and a color system with a dominant wavelength of approximately 490nm. The biofeedback measurement was supplemented by a qualitative interview. Participant responses were analyzed for key words, phrases, and trends related to consumer attitude and product preference. While no significant differences were found between the visual stimuli, this study provides insight, limitations, and direction for future psychophysiological research relating to e-commerce.--Abstract

Design Factors That Influence Emotional Responses to Engage in Instructional Visual Display Designs

The purpose of this research was to understand the emotions emitted by college students in response to viewing online digital representations of evidenced-based visual display design principles. The study focused on identifying an approach to the design of visual displays that reflects human information processing design principles applicable to online instruction and that contributes to the enhancement of students' emotional engagement with online instruction. The study focused on investigating technological approaches to measuring the indicators of each participant's responses in two different emotional dimensions: emotional arousal (high/low) as detected by the Q sensor, and emotional valence (positive/negative) as detected by the CERT. This study included a large amount of data: 12,896 electrodermal activities to generalize people's emotional arousal changes over 124 representations and 104 subjects. Also, 851,701 facial expressions were collected to generalize the effects of people's positive emotion valence. A two-way ANOVA found a difference of emotional arousal in simple-text representations. The highest emotional arousal was on good color images (M=0.827) and the lowest emotional arousal was on poor texture images (M=0.632.). A one-way analysis of variance found the highest mean score (M=0.743) was at the format of one paragraph with the 1.0 line spacing. The lowest mean score (M=0.505) was the format of 3 columns. On the other hand, the fixed-mixed regression model predicted the increment of emotional valence and showed that visual variables had significantly different effects of facial expressions. The good digital visual display representations in color increased 0.023 of joy facial expressions. The good digital visual display representations in shape increased 0.063 of joy facial expression. When the format of 3 columns was shown on the screen, the participant's joy raised 0.104. Compared to other three formats, this was the highest increment. The findings of this research lead us to believe that to enhance student's emotional engagement in online instruction, a clear need exists to design digital visual displays that emitted their positive emotions. These positive emotions, in turn, may improve their affective experiences. In the reflections of the findings, they offer the statements and applications of representations are offered for online instructional designers and developers

Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines [2006 edition]

The new edition of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines. These guidelines reflect HHS’ commitment to identifying innovative, research-based approaches that result in highly responsive and easy-to-use Web sites for the public. These guidelines help move us in that direction by providing practical, yet authoritative, guidance on a broad range of Web design and communication issues. Having access to the best available research helps to ensure we make the right decisions the first time around and reduces the possibility of errors and costly mistakes

WanderLog Travel Application

WanderLog is a travel journal/scrapbook application developed for Android™ Devices. This is an application that can be used by study-abroad students or other travelers to record their experiences. The application gives users the ability to create “timelines”, which are the equivalent to journals or scrapbooks. Each timeline can contain one or more “entries,” which are the equivalent of pages in a journal. Users then can insert photographs, videos, audio recordings, and text into entries

Designing a user configurable online community framework

Content Management Systems (CMSs) are widely used to create online communities supporting organizations, classes, and groups. These communities provide various functionalities, e.g. discussion forums, shared repositories for documents and links, collaborative spaces, and different communication channels, like chat or instant messaging. Often the range of functionalities offered is unnecessarily rich, and some remain unused, leading to cluttered users’ workspaces and difficulties in finding information. Currently, communities that are developed with CMS do not allow user customization. Even for the community owner (e.g. a teacher, a group manager), it is hard to customize the functionality and interface of a community, because this requires some programming skills. I have designed new CMS allowing users of an online community (both owners and regular users) to design and configure their personal view of the community’s dashboard by adding the functionalities that are present in the community’s homepage and arranging them on the screen according to their preferences

AN INVESTIGATION OF USER INTERFACE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A MOBILE HEALTH SYSTEM FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH DEXTERITY IMPAIRMENTS

Mobile health (mHealth) systems have a great potential to empower individuals with chronic disease and disabilities to engage in preventive self-care. Before persons with disabilities can harness the potential of mhealth, the accessibility of mhealth systems should be addressed. An innovative mHealth system called iMHere (Internet Mobile Health and Rehabilitation) has been developed at the University of Pittsburgh to support self-care and adherence to self-care regimens for individuals with spina bifida and other complex conditions who are vulnerable to secondary complications. However, the existing design of the iMHere system was not designed to accommodate users with dexterity impairments. The overall goal of this research is to design and transform an existing mHealth system to make it more usable and accessible for users with dexterity impairment. To achieve this goal, three studies were conducted: Evaluation, Design and Development, and Validation of personalization and accessibility design in mobile health apps. The first study (Evaluation) was aimed to identify the barriers of the original iMHere apps to accessibility, and to explore the necessary features that may improve users’ experiences. The second study (Design and Development) was aimed to develop innovative designs to improve the accessibility and usability of the mHealth system. The third study (Validation) was aimed to evaluate the users’ acceptance of and preferences regarding the personalized and accessible mHealth services on a smartphone. The accessible design and development model that is presented in this dissertation incorporates user-interface components related to physical presentation (widgets, visual cues) and navigation (activity flow and layout order). Personalization that provides the ability for a user to modify the appearance of content, such as the size of the icons and the color of text, are proposed as an optimal solution to address potential issues and barriers to accessibility. The importance of personalization strategies for accessibility is also discussed

A Pattern Approach to Examine the Design Space of Spatiotemporal Visualization

Pattern language has been widely used in the development of visualization systems. This dissertation applies a pattern language approach to explore the design space of spatiotemporal visualization. The study provides a framework for both designers and novices to communicate, develop, evaluate, and share spatiotemporal visualization design on an abstract level. The touchstone of the work is a pattern language consisting of fifteen design patterns and four categories. In order to validate the design patterns, the researcher created two visualization systems with this framework in mind. The first system displayed the daily routine of human beings via a polygon-based visualization. The second system showed the spatiotemporal patterns of co-occurring hashtags with a spiral map, sunburst diagram, and small multiples. The evaluation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed design patterns to guide design thinking and create novel visualization practices

Computer Visualization of Song Lyrics

Currently, there are several methods for recommending music to an individual. These vary from word-of-mouth to recommendation databases. This project attempts to visualize the lyrical relationships found in collections of songs. We discover these relationships by examining the structural and contextual components of a song\u27s lyrics, and using those components in a comparison algorithm. We gathered a set of 5605 lyrics and associated data in order to establish a network of relationships to navigate and explore. The visualizations allow users to graphically explore the collection to discover trends, interesting data, or to find new songs to listen to. We performed user testing to discover the ease-of-use of our system as well as the subjective accuracy of its recommendations