UBIQUITOUS SYSTEM CAPABILITIES AND USER READINESS: AN ACTIVITY PERSPECTIVE

Based on the basic premises of both human-computer interaction research and technology acceptance research, this study investigates the relationship between ubiquitous system design and user adoption. Using the unifying framework of Activity Theory, it conceptualizes user-system interaction as a toolmediated activity. From this perspective, interactivity, personalization and contextualization are the basic design features that enable a ubiquitous system to facilitate such an activity in different ways. It is hypothesized that these system capabilities shape major user experiences including sense of control, perceived understanding and motive fulfilment, which lead to how ready they are to interact with the system. The empirical results obtained from an experiment support the hypothesized relationships, and suggest that the system capabilities interplay with each other in their effects. The finding provides insight on how to balance the capabilities in the design of ubiquitous systems for different tasks and different users

Ubiquitous Computing Capabilities and User-System Interaction Readiness: An Activity Perspective

Based on mobile computing technologies, ubiquitous systems enable people to access information anywhere and anytime. In addition to the capability of interactivity concerning inquiry processing based on user input through interfaces, ubiquitous systems may offer contextualization and personalization dealing with information filtering based on task contexts and user preferences, which help relieve user effort on the move. This study investigates how different combinations of these major ubiquitous computing capabilities affect user behavior. Using the unifying framework of Activity Theory, it conceptualizes user-system interaction as a tool-mediated activity, the different aspects of which are facilitated by interactivity, contextualization, and personalization. It is hypothesized that such capabilities shape user experiences including sense of control, motive fulfillment, and perceived understanding, which lead to how ready people are to interact with ubiquitous systems. The results from an experiment support the hypothesized relationships, and suggest that different capabilities are interdependent in their effects. The findings yield insights on how to take a systematic and balanced approach of ubiquitous system design to enhance user experiences

Consumer Attitudes toward News Delivering: An Experimental Evaluation of the Use and Efficacy of Personalized Recommendations

This paper presents an experiment on newsreaders’ behavior and preferences on the interaction with online personalized news. Different recommendation approaches, based on consumption profiles and user location, and the impact of personalized news on several aspects of consumer decision-making are examined on a group of volunteers. Results show a significant preference for reading recommended news over other news presented on the screen, regardless of the chosen editorial layout. In addition, the study also provides support for the creation of profiles taking into consideration the evolution of user’s interests. The proposed solution is valid for users with different reading habits and can be successfully applied even to users with small consumption history. Our findings can be used by news providers to improve online services, thus increasing readers’ perceived satisfaction.Paula Viana and Márcio Soares were partial supported by Project “TEC4Growth—Pervasive Intelligence, Enhancers and Proofs of Concept with Industrial Impact/NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000020”, under Research Line FourEyes, financed by the North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, and through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Paula Viana has also been supported by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project UIDB/50014/2020. Rita Gaio was partially supported by CMUP, which is Financed by national funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project with the reference UIDB/00144/2020. Amílcar Correia was partially supported by the Project Pglobal (Nr. 2014/38592-Programa Operacional Temático Factores de Competitividade/Programa Operacional do Norte, Funded by ERDF).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Trilogy of Science: Filling the Knowledge Management Gap with Knowledge Science and Theory

The international knowledge management field has different ways of investigating, developing, believing, and studying knowledge management. Knowledge management (KM) is distinguished deductively by know-how, and its intangible nature establishes different approaches to KM concepts, practices, and developments. Exploratory research and theoretical principles have formed functional intelligences from 1896 to 2013, leading to a knowledge management knowledge science (KMKS) concept that derived a grounded theory of knowledge activity (KAT). This study addressed the impact of knowledge production problems on KM practice. The purpose of this qualitative meta-analysis study was to fit KM practice within the framework of knowledge science (KS) study. Themed questions and research variables focused on field mechanisms, operative functions, principle theory, and relationships of KMKS. The action research used by American practitioners has not established a formal structure for KS. The meta-data-analysis examined 385 transdisciplinary peer-reviewed articles using social science, service science, and systems science databases, with a selection of interdisciplinary studies that had a practice-research-theory framework. Key attributes utilizing Boolean limiters, words, phrases and publication dates, along with triangulation, language analysis and coding through analytic software identified commonalities of the data under study. Findings reflect that KM has not become a theoretically saturated field. KS as the forensic science of KM creates a paradigm shift, causes social change that averts rapid shifts in management direction and uncertainty, and connects KM philosophy and science of knowledge. These findings have social change implications by informing the work of managers and academics to generate a methodical applied science

Diseño, producción e evaluación de tutoriales formativos para Web 2.0

Hace ya algunos años, 1996, el Informe Delors plasmó los cambios que requiere la sociedad moderna, basados en una educación que lleve al individuo a producir los ajustes que precisa para vivir en una comunidad que se encuentra en constante modificación, y a una velocidad inesperada, Estos cuatro pilares, hoy en día, se complementan con el desarrollo de competencias en el manejo de la Tecnología de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC). A fin de lograr este nuevo ciudadano, tanto del país como del mundo, es requisito indispensable que los docentes en formación tengan la preparación acorde a la situación, ellos serán los socializadores de los cambios y los encargados de desarrollar las competencias que requieren los avances tecnológicos del Siglo XXI. Es por esta razón que proponemos como investigación DISEÑO, PRODUCCIÓN Y EVALUACIÓN DE TUTORIALES FORMATIVOS PARA WEB 2.0, en el cual incluimos algunas de las herramientas que conforman esta nueva forma de aprender: El chat y la mensajería, etiquetado, imágenes, podcast, sindicación, Weblog y Wiki. Una vez diseñado y producido, aplicamos el Tutorial Formativo para la Web 2.0, a veintiún (21) docentes en formación, cursantes del 8vo. semestre de la Licenciatura en Educación, Mención Inglés, de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela. Estos alumnos, debieron completar el instrumento para determinar las actitudes hacia las herramientas Web 2.0 (Llorente 2008), antes y después de aplicado el tutorial, también se midió el desarrollo de las competencias presentadas en el tutorial, y por último, su Experiencia de Usuario después de trabajar con el tutorial. En líneas generales los resultados fueron satisfactorios, pues muestran que si hubo desarrollo de las competencias mediante el tutorial, y que la aceptación de éste fue bastante buena

Establishing User Requirements for a Recommender System in an Online Union Catalogue: an Investigation of WorldCat.org

This project, undertaken in collaboration with OCLC, aimed to investigate the potential role of recommendations within WorldCat, the publicly accessible union catalogue of libraries participating in the OCLC global cooperative. The goal of the project was a set of conceptual design guidelines for a WorldCat.org recommender system, based on a comprehensive understanding of the systems users and their needs. Taking a mixed-methods approach, the investigation consisted of four phases. Phase one consisted of twenty-one focus groups with key user goups held in three locations; the UK, the US, and Australia and New Zealand. Phase 2 consisted of a pop-up survey implemented on WorldCat.org, and gathered 2,918 responses. Phase three represented an analysis of two months of WorldCat.org transaction log data, consisting of over 15,000,000 sessions. Phase four was a lab based user study investigating and comparing the use of WorldCat.org with Amazon. Findings from each strand were integrated, and the key themes to emerge from the research are discussed. Different methods of classifying the WorldCat.org user population are presented, along with a taxonomy of work- and search-tasks. Key perspectives on the utility of a recommender system are considered, along with a reflection on how the information search behaviour exhibited by users interacting with recommendations while undertaking typical catalogue tasks can be interpreted. Based on the enriched perspective of the system, and the role of recommendation in the catalogue, a series of conceptual design specifications are presented for the development of a WorldCat.org recommender system

Experiments on user experiences with recommender interfaces

Recommender systems have been increasingly adopted as personalisation services in e-commerce. They facilitate users to locate items which they would be interested in viewing or purchasing. However, most studies have emphasised on the algorithm's performance, rather than on in-depth analysis of user experiences with the recommender interface. In this article, we report the results of two studies that compared two recommender interfaces: the organisation-based interface (where recommendations are presented in a category structure via the preference-based organisation method) and the standard ranked list (where recommendations are listed one after the other as ordered by their prediction scores).The first study focuses on evaluating users' eye-movement behaviour in these interfaces. With the help of an eye tracker, we found that the organisation interface (ORG) can significantly attract users' attentions to more recommended items. As a result, more users made product choices in that interface. The second, larger-scale, cross-cultural user survey further shows that the ORG performed significantly better in terms of enhancing users' perceived recommendation quality, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of the system. Hence, these empirical findings suggest that the change of recommender interface design can not only alter users' attention distribution, but also influence their subjective attitudes towards the system