Assessing fun: young children as evaluators of interactive systems.

In this paper, we describe an exploratory study on the challenges of conducting usability tests with very young children aged 3 to 4 years old (nursery age) and the differences when working with older children aged 5 to 6 years old (primary school). A pilot study was conducted at local nursery and primary schools to understand and experience the challenges working with young children interacting with computer products. We report on the studies and compare the experiences of working with children of different age groups in evaluation studies of interactive systems

Fast computation of the performance evaluation of biometric systems: application to multibiometric

The performance evaluation of biometric systems is a crucial step when designing and evaluating such systems. The evaluation process uses the Equal Error Rate (EER) metric proposed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/IEC). The EER metric is a powerful metric which allows easily comparing and evaluating biometric systems. However, the computation time of the EER is, most of the time, very intensive. In this paper, we propose a fast method which computes an approximated value of the EER. We illustrate the benefit of the proposed method on two applications: the computing of non parametric confidence intervals and the use of genetic algorithms to compute the parameters of fusion functions. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed EER approximation method in term of computing time, and the interest of its use to reduce the learning of parameters with genetic algorithms. The proposed method opens new perspectives for the development of secure multibiometrics systems by speeding up their computation time.Comment: Future Generation Computer Systems (2012

Usability and open source software.

Open source communities have successfully developed many pieces of software although most computer users only use proprietary applications. The usability of open source software is often regarded as one reason for this limited distribution. In this paper we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open-source development influence usability. We describe how existing human-computer interaction techniques can be used to leverage distributed networked communities, of developers and users, to address issues of usability

The usability of open source software: analysis and prospects

Open source communities have successfully developed many pieces of software although most computer users only use proprietary applications. The usability of open source software is often regarded as one reason for this limited distribution. In this paper we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open-source development influence usability. We describe how existing human-computer interaction techniques can be used to leverage distributed networked communities, of developers and users, to address issues of usability

Experimental Methods in IIR: The Tension between Rigour and Ethics in Studies Involving Users with Dyslexia

Designing user studies in the interactive information retrieval (IIR) paradigm on people with impairments may sometimes require different methodological considerations than for other users. Consequently, there may be a tension between what the community regards as being a rigorous methodology against what researchers can do ethically with their users. This paper discusses issues to consider when designing IIR studies involving people with dyslexia, such as sampling, informed consent and data collection. The conclusion is that conducting user studies on participants with dyslexia requires special considerations at all stages of the experimental design. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness and understanding in the research community about experimental methods involving users with dyslexia, and addresses researchers, as well as editors and reviewers. Several of the issues raised do not only apply to people with dyslexia, but have implications when researching other groups, for instance elderly people and users with learning, cognitive, sensory or motor impairments

Remote laboratories in teaching and learning – issues impinging on widespread adoption in science and engineering education

This paper discusses the major issues that impinge on the widespread adoption of remote controlled laboratories in science and engineering education. This discussion largely emerges from the work of the PEARL project and is illustrated with examples and evaluation data from the project. Firstly the rationale for wanting to offer students remote experiments is outlined. The paper deliberately avoids discussion of technical implementation issues of remote experiments but instead focuses on issues that impinge on the specification and design of such facilities. This includes pedagogic, usability and accessibility issues. It compares remote experiments to software simulations. It also considers remote experiments in the wider context for educational institutions and outlines issues that will affect their decisions as to whether to adopt this approach. In conclusion it argues that there are significant challenges to be met if remote laboratories are to achieve a widespread presence in education but expresses the hope that this delineation of the issues is a contribution towards meeting these challenges

Understanding Public Evaluation: Quantifying Experimenter Intervention

Public evaluations are popular because some research questions can only be answered by turning “to the wild.” Different approaches place experimenters in different roles during deployment, which has implications for the kinds of data that can be collected and the potential bias introduced by the experimenter. This paper expands our understanding of how experimenter roles impact public evaluations and provides an empirical basis to consider different evaluation approaches. We completed an evaluation of a playful gesture-controlled display – not to understand interaction at the display but to compare different evaluation approaches. The conditions placed the experimenter in three roles, steward observer, overt observer, and covert observer, to measure the effect of experimenter presence and analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each approach