Understanding the role of emotions, usability components and design features in HCI

This paper has discussed the observations of various emotions which are invoked in the human computer interface and how these emotions affect the decisions of the users online. This paper has also discussed usability test methods in the human computer interface design and its relation with the usability of the interfaces. Also some principles are put forward which should be implemented for the development of better interfaces

Web page enhancement on desktop and mobile browsers

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 2013."February 2013." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 154-165).The Web is a convenient platform to deliver information, but reading web pages is not as easy as it was in 1990s. This thesis focuses on investigating techniques to enhance web pages on desktop and mobile browsers for two specific populations: non-native English readers and mobile users. There are three issues addressed in this thesis: web page readability, web page skimmability and continuous reading support on mobile devices. On today's primarily English-language Web, non-native readers encounter some problems, even if they have some fluency in English. This thesis focuses on content presentation and proposes a new transformation method, Jenga Format, to enhance web page readability. A user study with 30 non-native users showed that Jenga transformation not only improved reading comprehension, but also made the web page reading easier. On the other hand, readability research has found that average reading times for non-native readers has remained the same or even worse. This thesis studies this issue and proposes Froggy GX (Generation neXt) to improve reading under time constraints. A user study with 20 non-native users showed that Froggy GX not only enhanced reading comprehension under time constraints, but also provided higher user satisfaction than reading unaided. When using the Web on mobile devices, the reading situation becomes challenging. Even worse, context switches, such as from walking to sitting, static standing, or hands-free situations like driving, happen in reading in on-the-go situations, but this scenario was not adequately addressed in previous studies. This thesis investigates this scenario and proposes a new mobile browser, Read4Me, to support continuous reading on a mobile device. A user study with 10 mobile users showed that auto-switching not only provided significantly fewer dangerous encounters than visual-reading, but also provided the best reading experience.by Chen-Hsiang Yu.Ph.D

Multimedia for language learning

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2013.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 79-81).Students studying foreign languages often wish to enjoy authentic foreign-language content - for example, foreign-language videos and comics. Existing means of presenting this content, however, are suboptimal from the perspective of language learning. We have developed a pair of tools that aim to help learners acquire the foreign language while enjoying authentic, foreign-language material. One tool is Smart Subtitles, which help learners learn vocabulary while watching videos. Our user evaluations have shown that Smart Subtitles help learners learn vocabulary more effectively than a popular approach for learning from video (dual subtitles). The other tool is a grammar visualization which illustrates the grammatical structure of sentences. This grammar visualization can be embedded into a number of language-learning applications. This includes a foreign-language manga reader we have built, which aims to help learners learn vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation while reading comics and manga. Our study for the grammar visualization shows that it helps monolinguals arrive at more accurate translations if we have an oracle taking the best translation of all, though there was no significant improvement in the average translation quality.by Geza Kovacs.M. Eng