Improving accessibility of tactile interaction for older users: lowering accuracy requirements to support drag-and-drop interaction

International audienceMobile applications offer great possibilities to the aging population but older adults face accessibility problems when using devices equipped with touchscreen. In order to respond to older users' special needs, it is necessary to support older users during tactile interaction to reduce error rates. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of the accuracy requirements for drag-and-drop interaction. 24 able-bodied older adults with different profiles (aged 65 to 86 years old, with corrected and not corrected eyesight, normal and low dexterity, different levels of education, different experience of use of computers and touchscreen) executed a series of tactile puzzle games on smartphone and tablet, with pen and fingers. We evaluate the number of errors for two levels of accuracy required for positioning the puzzle pieces: 95% (higher) and 80% (lower). Older adults made fewer errors of accuracy during lower accuracy levels and consequently fewer supplementary gestures for positioning the targets. Besides, lowering the accuracy requirement was an effective support for interaction because it also reduced the effects of users' profiles, improving the accessibility for people with no experience of use of computers

Design Driven Development of a Web-Enabled System for Data Mining in Arthroplasty Registry

This research was inspired by the work at the Norwegian Arthroplasty Registry, which serves as a national resource for understanding the longevity of implanted prostheses, analyzing risks, and patient outcomes in general. At this moment, they have no online system that would help and enable several user groups to take advantage of the data for clinical, research, and informative purposes. This thesis has contributed with a high-fidelity prototype of a desktop application named LeddPOR. The system is dedicated to three user groups: patients, physicians, and researchers. The project was completed in collaboration with three other master students, comprising a back-end and front-end development team. Knut T. Hufthamer and Sølve Ånneland, who provided valuable data mining tasks to be incorporated in the prototype, and Arle Farsund Solheim created visualizations that allow interactive data exploration. The project followed the User-Centered Design approach, as a method to produce a prototype that would be appreciated by real users. The Design Science Research methodology allowed five iterations, within which prototypes from low- to high fidelity have taken form. The final, fully interactive prototype is intended for physicians, researchers, and patients. There are two dedicated parts; one for hip, and the other for knee. Under those, a number of data mining tasks could be performed at the convenience of the expert user. The sessions can be saved and reviewed according to users' preferences and needs. The patient part of the system is offering mainly information, but also some resources such as formerly developed applications supporting post-operative care. During this development, we have defined two patient personas, acknowledging their different needs. On the expert side, two personas were created, one for physicians and one for researchers. Usability testing was conducted with both expert and novice users, which suggested a high success rate. The final System Usability Score (SUS) of 95 points, as well as feedback from evaluation, indicate a potential to develop a product that could be valuable for several user groups.Masteroppgave i informasjonsvitenskapINFO390MASV-INF

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

Systematic Review of Usability Engineering Management Studies for the Aging Population -UEM4Agin

Usability management is one of the core elements of any software to make it efficient and effective. Unfortunately, most of the time usability as well as its management is neglected while developing software that may result as ineffective and inefficient software design. In different eras different researchers performed studies to highlight the management of usability and to show its importance. Due to the increase in the aging population, the concern for the aging population assistances of each equipment becomes to be necessary. Number of Steps has been taken so far to help out the aging population but remained limited to visual considerations, such as stronger contrasts or larger characters on the displays and printing, or such physical characteristics as the ease for pressing buttons. In this paper, our focus is to perform a systematic review (SR) of usability management specifically for the aging population/senior citizens and its limitations. The systematic review aims to address three research questions: 1) What is the current status of usability management/usability engineering management research for the aging population/senior citizen around the globe? As we found that the literature on usability management for the aging population began in 1992 and increased thereafter, there is a lack of organized research teams and dedicated usability management journals for researching the aging population. High-impact theoretical studies are scarce. On the application side, no original and systematic research frameworks have been developed. The understanding and definition of usability and usability management is not well synchronized with international norms. 2) What are the existing methods, approaches, frameworks and practices that are currently being used in usability engineering management for the aging population? 3) What are the limitations of usability engineering management for the aging population/senior citizen? Purpose of this study is to identify the current research problems, existing studies for providing valid solution to these problems and will find out the limitations of existing work for covering the existing problems in usability engineering management specifically for the aging population. This will be done by performing quantitative literature of different databases and all the results will be gathered by analyzing and summarizing the statistical data using “R Studio”. Remedial techniques for handling the limitation of usability engineering management will be planned in future for the aging population

Visualisation and manipulation tools for Modal logic

In this thesis, an investigation into how visualisation and manipulation tools can provide better support for learners of Modal logic is described. Problems associated with learning Modal logic are also researched.Seven areas topics in Modal logic are investigated, as is the influence of domain independent factors (e. g. motivation) on learning. Studies show that students find concepts such as Modal proofs and systems difficult to learn, whilst possible worlds and Modes are fairly straightforward. Areas such as reference, belief and accessibility relations fall between these extremes.Two roles for representations in reasoning are identified: providing a concrete domain for students to reason about, and supporting the process of reasoning. Systems which make use of these complementary representations were found to be more effective for learners than either the syntactic or the diagrammatic representations traditionally used to teach Modal logic.A review of software used to support students learning logic highlights two important features: the use of examples, and automation of routine tasks. A learning environment for Modal logic was designed which incorporated these. The environment was developed using an adapted version of Smalltalk's Model-View-Controller mechanism, and incorporates complementary representations, enhance by direct manipulation.A further study investigates the added benefits of using this tool, as opposed to using the same representation but working with pen and paper. This confirms the importance of using 'concrete' content representations and minimising learners' cognitive load. Performance measures show that software users learnt more, had a deeper style of learning, and found the topics less abstract than their counterparts working with pen & paper.This research shows that complementary representations are an effective way of supporting students studying Modal logic, and that visualisation and manipulation tools which incorporate these systems will provide additional benefits for learners

An investigation of mid-air gesture interaction for older adults

Older adults (60+) face natural and gradual decline in cognitive, sensory and motor functions that are often the reason for the difficulties that older users come up against when interacting with computers. For that reason, the investigation and design of age-inclusive input methods for computer interaction is much needed and relevant due to an ageing population. The advances of motion sensing technologies and mid-air gesture interaction reinvented how individuals can interact with computer interfaces and this modality of input method is often deemed as a more “natural” and “intuitive” than using purely traditional input devices such mouse interaction. Although explored in gaming and entertainment, the suitability of mid-air gesture interaction for older users in particular is still little known. The purpose of this research is to investigate the potential of mid-air gesture interaction to facilitate computer use for older users, and to address the challenges that older adults may face when interacting with gestures in mid-air. This doctoral research is presented as a collection of papers that, together, develop the topic of ageing and computer interaction through mid-air gestures. The initial point for this research was to establish how older users differ from younger users and focus on the challenges faced by older adults when interacting with mid-air gesture interaction. Once these challenges were identified, this work aimed to explore a series of usability challenges and opportunities to further develop age-inclusive interfaces based on mid-air gesture interaction. Through a series of empirical studies, this research intends to provide recommendations for designing mid-air gesture interaction that better take into consideration the needs and skills of the older population and aims to contribute to the advance of age-friendly interfaces

Usability Study of Integrated RULA-KinectTM System for Work Posture Assessment

A good work posture is one of vital contributors to occupational health and to increase the efficiency of industrial workers. Recently, numerous research works have developed an Integrated RULA- KinectTM system for work posture assessment; however, usability of the developed system remains unknown. The objective of this study was to develop a prototype of Integrated RULA-KinectTM system. Additionally, this study performed usability testing on the Integrated RULA- KinectTM system and RULA Employee Assessment Worksheet to determine feedbacks and reactions from the potential users. A focus group session was conducted among eight potential users, which divided into 2 groups (novice and expert). The results of the focus group session revealed that both novice and expert users agreed that the Integrated RULA-KinectTM system is easy to use compared to RULA Employee Assessment Worksheet. This study concluded that the Integrated RULA-KinectTM system is able to counter some limitations of the RULA Employee Assessment Worksheet