(M)ad to see me?: Intelligent Advertisement Placement: Balancing User Annoyance and Advertising Effectiveness

Advertising is an unavoidable albeit a frustrating part of mobile interactions. Due to limited form factor, mobile advertisements often resort to intrusive strategies where they temporarily block the user's view in an attempt to increase effectiveness and force the user's attention. While such strategies contribute to advertising awareness and effectiveness, they do so at the cost of degrading the user's overall experience and can lead to frustration and annoyance. In this paper, we contribute by developing Perceptive Ads as an intelligent advertisement placement strategy that minimizes disruptions caused by ads while preserving their effectiveness. Our work is the first to simultaneously consider the needs of users, app developers, and advertisers. Ensuring the needs of all stakeholders are taken into account is essential for the adoption of advertising strategies as users (and indirectly developers) would reject strategies that are disruptive but effective, while advertisers would reject strategies that are non-disruptive but inefficient. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique through a user study with N = 16 participants and two representative examples of mobile apps that commonly integrate advertisements (a game and a news app). Results from the study demonstrate that our approach can improve perception towards advertisements by 43.75% without affecting application interactivity while at the same time increasing advertisement effectiveness by 37.5% compared to a state-of-the-art baseline.Peer reviewe

DEVELOPMENT AND PRELIMINARY FEASIBILITY OF THE MOBILE PARTICIPATION ASSESSMENT TOOL: AN ECOLOGICAL MOMENTARY ASSESSMENT OF PARTICIPATION IN TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

Participation as a primary outcome of interest has gained increasing focus for disability and rehabilitation research and practice. Current means of assessing participation are limited by their static nature and reliance on an individual’s accurate and unbiased recall of past events. In particular, participation is an important outcome in traumatic brain injury (TBI) research and practice, and for these individuals accurate and unbiased recall can be impacted by the functional limitations that are commonly associated with this injury. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is an assessment approach that employs the repeated measurement of an outcome of interests in the natural, real-world environment. EMA may reduce the limitations of current measures of participation as well as enhance reporting accuracy and reliability of individuals with a history of TBI. The main objectives of this dissertation were to 1) develop a preliminary measure of participation that can be delivered using EMA techniques and 2) examine the feasibility and usability of EMA in a TBI population that exhibits cognitive impairment. The first aim of this study was the preliminary development of a participation assessment that could be delivered via EMA techniques. The Mobile Participation Assessment Tool (mPAT) was developed and underwent preliminary validation by the research team in conjunction with a group of experts in the field of rehabilitation and disability sciences and individuals with a history of TBI. An accompanying scoring algorithm was also developed by the group. The second aim of examining the feasibility of using EMA techniques to assess participation in community dwelling adults with TBI and presence of cognitive impairment was completed by asking adults with TBI (n=12) to complete a four week EMA protocol to assess participation in the real-world environment in which they live. This study was funded in part through the School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences’ Dean’s Research Development Fund at the University of Pittsburgh

Enhancing User Experience with Olfaction in Virtual Reality

Human experiences in the physical world are inherently multi-modal, in that we rely on all our senses to perceive our environment, yet experiences within virtual reality (VR) are mainly restricted to our primary senses of vision and audition. The sense of smell (olfaction) has been shown to strongly affect human emotions, memories, and behaviour, but there have only been few attempts to integrate olfactory stimuli into virtual environments. This thesis investigates the addition of olfaction as a modality for VR to enhance user experiences through odour emitting virtual objects and olfactory notifications. As part of this research, I introduce a systematic methodology for odour selection, and develop an off-the-shelf, affordable device for odour display (olfactory display) for VR head-mounted displays. My research begins with a preliminary study examining the effect of olfactory stimuli on participants’ emotional perception of digital images, which was used as a test-bed for gaining insights into the use of olfactory displays and olfaction in a HCI setting. I then report on three empirical studies that examine how olfactory cues can enhance user experience in VR in terms of three key metrics: the quality of experience, task performance, and the sense of presence, which is the feeling of ‘being there’ in the virtual environment. The results from these three studies indicated that congruent, pleasant odours could significantly enhance quality of experience, improve task performance, and to varying degrees increase the sense of presence in VR. Incongruent, pleasant odours however often caused confusion among participants and appeared not to have a significant effect on the sense of presence but were able to improve task performance. The third of these studies also examined the use of odour notifications to enhance user experiences in VR. Participants were able to perceive and understand the olfaction-based notifications, which produced an increase in the sense of presence, quality of experience, as well as task performance. Overall, this thesis’ findings support the notion that olfaction can enhance user experience in VR and it also draws attention to the importance of a systematic odour selection methodology

Individual differences and contextual factors influence the experience and practice of self-care with type 1 diabetes technologies

Adults with Type 1 Diabetes have choices about what technologies to use to self-manage their chronic condition. They can use glucose meters, insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitors, smartphone apps, and other mobile technologies to support their everyday care. However, little is known about how user experience might influence what they choose to adopt or how they choose to use technologies when practicing self-management. A series of situated exploratory qualitative studies were conducted to examine contextual factors that influence the use of self-care technology “in the wild.” Autoethnography was used to gain empathy for the everyday use of a mobile medical device and to set up a mixed method user study, involving contextual interviews, a diary study, and the observation of a diabetes technology group meet-up. A combined bottom-up thematic analysis of the data from the user studies uncovered commonalities among the users in how context influenced the use, carrying, adoption, and misuse of these devices. However, large variability in how user experience impacted self-care for the 41 participants was also revealed. Although these self-care technologies were effective, efficient, and easy to learn for the participants from a human factors engineering perspective, context specific issues arose that impacted decisions to use them. The physical environment, the social situation, the cultural context, and individual differences influence these choices. Quality of life can be impacted by the design of Type 1 Diabetes technologies, and people sometimes prioritise quality of life over immediate or long-term health benefits. This research points to the need to study the use of these mobile medical devices in-situ to understand how their design can influence adoption and use in everyday life. However, the variety of everyday self-care contexts and the diversity of possible user preferences do not lead to straightforward or universal design implications. Future work should look at the influence of design of other self-management technologies that are being developed to deal with the move of healthcare outside of clinical settings and focus on empowering adults to make personal choices about their self-care technologies that suit the context of their, sometimes messy, everyday lives

Using Active Learning to Teach Critical and Contextual Studies: One Teaching Plan, Two Experiments, Three Videos.

Since the 1970s, art and design education at UK universities has existedas a divided practice; on the one hand applying active learning in thestudio and on the other hand enforcing passive learning in the lecturetheatre. As a result, art and design students are in their vast majorityreluctant about modules that may require them to think, read and writecritically during their academic studies. This article describes, evaluatesand analyses two individual active learning experiments designed todetermine if it is possible to teach CCS modules in a manner thatencourages student participation. The results reveal that opting foractive learning methods improved academic achievement, encouragedcooperation, and enforced an inclusive classroom. Furthermore, andcontrary to wider perception, the article demonstrates that activelearning methods can be equally beneficial for small-size as well aslarge-size groups

Proceedings / 6th International Symposium of Industrial Engineering - SIE 2015, 24th-25th September, 2015, Belgrade

editors Vesna Spasojević-Brkić, Mirjana Misita, Dragan D. Milanovi

Proceedings / 6th International Symposium of Industrial Engineering - SIE 2015, 24th-25th September, 2015, Belgrade

editors Vesna Spasojević-Brkić, Mirjana Misita, Dragan D. Milanovi