Gaming on the edge: using seams in ubicomp games

Outdoor multi-player games are an increasingly popular application area for ubiquitous computing, supporting experimentation both with new technologies and new user experiences. This paper presents an outdoor ubicomp game that exploits the gaps or seams that exist in complex computer systems. Treasure is designed so that players move in and out of areas of wireless network coverage, taking advantage not only of the connectivity within a wireless ‘hotspot’ but of the lack of connectivity outside it. More broadly, this paper discusses how the notion of seamful design can be a source of design ideas for ubicomp games

Designing Attention-Centric Notification Systems: Five HCI Challenges

Through an examination of the emerging domain of cognitive systems, with a focus on attention-centric cognitive systems used for notification, this document explores the human-computer interaction challenges that must be addressed for successful interface design. This document asserts that with compatible tools and methods, user notification requirements and interface usability can be abstracted, expressed, and compared with critical parameter ratings; that is, even novice designers can assess attention cost factors to determine target parameter levels for new system development. With a general understanding of the user tasks supported by the notification system, a designer can access the repository of design knowledge for appropriate information and interaction design techniques (e.g., use of color, audio features, animation, screen size, transition of states, etc), which have analytically and empirically derived ratings. Furthermore, usability evaluation methods, provided to designers as part of the integrated system, are adaptable to specific combinations of targeted parameter levels. User testing results can be conveniently added back into the design knowledge repository and compared to target parameter levels to determine design success and build reusable HCI knowledge. This approach is discussed in greater detail as we describe five HCI challenges relating to cognitive system development: (1) convenient access to basic research and guidelines, (2) requirements engineering methods for notification interfaces, (3) better and more usable predictive modeling for pre-attentive and dual-task interfaces, (4) standard empirical evaluation procedures for notification systems, and (5) conceptual frameworks for organizing reusable design and software components. This document also describes our initial work toward building infrastructure to overcome these five challenges, focused on notification system development. We described LINK-UP, a design environment grounded on years of theory and method development within HCI, providing a mechanism to integrate interdisciplinary expertise from the cognitive systems research community. Claims allow convenient access to basic research and guidelines, while modules parallel a lifecycle development iteration and provide a process for requirements engineering guided by this basic research. The activities carried out through LINK-UP provide access to and interaction with reusable design components organized based on our framework. We think that this approach may provide the scientific basis necessary for exciting interdisciplinary advancement through many fields of design, with notification systems serving as an initial model. A version of this document will appear as chapter 3 in the book Cognitive Systems: Human Cognitive Models in Systems Design edited by Chris Forsythe, Michael Bernard, and Timothy Goldsmith resulting from a workshop led by the editors in summer 2003. The authors are grateful for the input of the workshop organizers and conference attendees in the preparation of this document

Assistive contents for hearing-impaired people

This paper reports an ongoing study on designing a learning content for hearing-impaired people. Since teaching hearing-impaired people orally is too burdening, both the teachers and students, an alternative has to be provided. Hence, the idea of providing contents in electronic means came into consideration.It is useful, because the hearing-impaired students could utilize the contents on their own pace.Understanding their limitations, this study attempts to gather the preferences by the hearing-impaired people.Hence, a series of interviews were conducted, assisted by a sign language interpreter.Based on the findings from the interviews, the contents were story-boarded. It was used for gathering feedback from the users. When the most preferred layout was determined, the content was developed, and tested with the users. It was found that the proposed requirements are able to make hearing-impaired happy to learn with the material, which is called Assistive Content for Hearing-impaired (AC4HI) people

Design: One, but in different forms

This overview paper defends an augmented cognitively oriented generic-design hypothesis: there are both significant similarities between the design activities implemented in different situations and crucial differences between these and other cognitive activities; yet, characteristics of a design situation (related to the design process, the designers, and the artefact) introduce specificities in the corresponding cognitive activities and structures that are used, and in the resulting designs. We thus augment the classical generic-design hypothesis with that of different forms of designing. We review the data available in the cognitive design research literature and propose a series of candidates underlying such forms of design, outlining a number of directions requiring further elaboration

A Virtual Desktop's First evaluation for an Augmented Design Process

Many CAD tools already allow to design and directly manipulate ideas in a digital way. However, designers still use pen and paper during the early design phase of their projects. Indeed, existing CAD tools constraint creative work. There is a need for a spontaneous human computer interaction in design computing. In order to answer to this need, we develop an integrated aided design tool based on a Virtual Desktop. The designer sits in front of a classical desk where s/he can design and manipulate drawings and generated models. This paper describes the observations made during experiment about Virtual Desktop’s use by a designer. The experiment demonstrates that the immersive aspect of our system interface modifies the relationship between the designer and his/her model and, by the way, how this relation generates a new type of augmented interaction.Peer reviewe

Playlists and time perspective

Research on playlists has focused on how usage is related to technological and music industry variables, and the demographic characteristics of users. However, it also seems reasonable to suspect a psychological component to playlist usage. The present research considered an individual’s propensity to devise and make use of playlists in terms of time perspective. Significant results indicate an emphasis on the time at hand while listening, so that playlist use has a present-orientated time perspective, rather than a future-oriented time perspective. The findings support other recent research illustrating that exercising control over everyday listening is an important aspect of musical behavior in present-day music listening

Beyond Usability: A Rubric to Evaluate the Emotional Impact of E-commerce Homepages

Given the popularity of usability testing, why do people still feel uncomfortable interacting with websites? Could it be because usability testing does not address the user experience but rather tends to deal with efficiency and navigation but seldom with experience? The current implementation of usability research heavily relies on quantitative analysis when the nature of the issue is qualitative. Few studies have adequate scope to include both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Activity theory describes several elements involved in human activity. By incorporating Activity Theory with quantitative and qualitative measures of user experience, the designer will be better able to assess the affective impact of a website design. The purpose of this study is to create a suitable instrument to measure and predict affective and experiential aspects of web interaction. The resulting instrument will provide affective data relevant to the overall emotional and experiential response to a website