Establishing the design knowledge for emerging interaction platforms

While awaiting a variety of innovative interactive products and services to appear in the market in the near future such as interactive tabletops, interactive TVs, public multi-touch walls, and other embedded appliances, this paper calls for preparation for the arrival of such interactive platforms based on their interactivity. We advocate studying, understanding and establishing the foundation for interaction characteristics and affordances and design implications for these platforms which we know will soon emerge and penetrate our everyday lives. We review some of the archetypal interaction platform categories of the future and highlight the current status of the design knowledge-base accumulated to date and the current rate of growth for each of these. We use example designs illustrating design issues and considerations based on the authors’ 12-year experience in pioneering novel applications in various forms and styles

Usability of mobile applications: literature review and rationale for a new usability model

The usefulness of mobile devices has increased greatly in recent years allowing users to perform more tasks in amobile context. This increase in usefulness has come at the expense of the usability of these devices in somecontexts. We conducted a small review of mobile usability models and found that usability is usually measured interms of three attributes; effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Other attributes, such as cognitive load, tend tobe overlooked in the usability models that are most prominent despite their likely impact on the success or failureof an application. To remedy this we introduces the PACMAD (People At the Centre of Mobile ApplicationDevelopment) usability model which was designed to address the limitations of existing usability models whenapplied to mobile devices. PACMAD brings together significant attributes from different usability models inorder to create a more comprehensive model. None of the attributes that it includes are new, but the existingprominent usability models ignore one or more of them. This could lead to an incomplete usability evaluation.We performed a literature search to compile a collection of studies that evaluate mobile applications and thenevaluated the studies using our model

Understanding user experience of mobile video: Framework, measurement, and optimization

Since users have become the focus of product/service design in last decade, the term User eXperience (UX) has been frequently used in the field of Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). Research on UX facilitates a better understanding of the various aspects of the user’s interaction with the product or service. Mobile video, as a new and promising service and research field, has attracted great attention. Due to the significance of UX in the success of mobile video (Jordan, 2002), many researchers have centered on this area, examining users’ expectations, motivations, requirements, and usage context. As a result, many influencing factors have been explored (Buchinger, Kriglstein, Brandt & Hlavacs, 2011; Buchinger, Kriglstein & Hlavacs, 2009). However, a general framework for specific mobile video service is lacking for structuring such a great number of factors. To measure user experience of multimedia services such as mobile video, quality of experience (QoE) has recently become a prominent concept. In contrast to the traditionally used concept quality of service (QoS), QoE not only involves objectively measuring the delivered service but also takes into account user’s needs and desires when using the service, emphasizing the user’s overall acceptability on the service. Many QoE metrics are able to estimate the user perceived quality or acceptability of mobile video, but may be not enough accurate for the overall UX prediction due to the complexity of UX. Only a few frameworks of QoE have addressed more aspects of UX for mobile multimedia applications but need be transformed into practical measures. The challenge of optimizing UX remains adaptations to the resource constrains (e.g., network conditions, mobile device capabilities, and heterogeneous usage contexts) as well as meeting complicated user requirements (e.g., usage purposes and personal preferences). In this chapter, we investigate the existing important UX frameworks, compare their similarities and discuss some important features that fit in the mobile video service. Based on the previous research, we propose a simple UX framework for mobile video application by mapping a variety of influencing factors of UX upon a typical mobile video delivery system. Each component and its factors are explored with comprehensive literature reviews. The proposed framework may benefit in user-centred design of mobile video through taking a complete consideration of UX influences and in improvement of mobile videoservice quality by adjusting the values of certain factors to produce a positive user experience. It may also facilitate relative research in the way of locating important issues to study, clarifying research scopes, and setting up proper study procedures. We then review a great deal of research on UX measurement, including QoE metrics and QoE frameworks of mobile multimedia. Finally, we discuss how to achieve an optimal quality of user experience by focusing on the issues of various aspects of UX of mobile video. In the conclusion, we suggest some open issues for future study

E-Government: Contrasting Approaches and AlternativeInsights

We focus contrasting a social informatics approach with socio-political and techno-centricdesign approaches, using data from a study of e-government activity in criminal justice as theempirical basis. By social informatics we mean ‘the interdisciplinary study of the design(s),uses, and consequences of information technology that takes into account their interactionwith institutional and cultural context’.†The empirical material comes from our ongoingstudies of integrated criminal justice efforts in the United States. By integrated criminaljustice we mean both the technological infrastructure and the institutional circuitry. Here wefocus on San Diego, California’s Automated Regional Justice Information Sharing system(ARJIS, see www.arjis.org).In the comparison of approaches to engaging ARJIS we focus attention to differences in howhuman actions, the ICT, and their interactions are represented,. And, in doing this wehighlight the alternative findings and interpretations that often arise from these differentapproaches to engaging e-government. We conclude our comparative analysis by returning tosocial informatics and engaging issues with improving the conceptual and methodologicaltool suites available, and with the importance of engaging the situated, social, and materialelements of any ICT-based system

MOBILE PHONES AS USEFUL LANGUAGE LEARNING TOOLS

Most youth are passionate about having the most recent mobile phones just to boast among their peers. They use them to make phone calls, take photos, listen to songs, watch videos, or gain access to the internet for entertainment. This paper presents how to change the mobile phone device from a communication device to an educational tool. It demonstrates that a mobile phone could be a useful tool in learning and teaching the English Language. In this paper, the researcher emphasize the potential of mobile phones as a learning tool for students and have incorporated them into the learning environment. The paper discusses the challenges and expected difficulties. Many theories(e.g. Behaviourist learning, Constructivist learning, Situated learning, Sociocultural theory of learning, Informal and lifelong learning) relevant to the use of mobile phones in education are presented and the different tasks and activities relevant to them are explored. The salient features of mobile phones which make them useful for language learning are discussed too. The possible methods that should be used for gaining the best of learning through mobile phones are proposed. Activities are classified in terms of the main theories and areas of learning relevant to learning with mobile technologies. This article concludes with a discussion of how moderate use of mobile phones may bring interest among the learners and transform the learning process as it helps learners to raise their self – esteem and self- confidence. The researcher tries to foresee the future of mobile learning in general and mobile phones in particular in learning English since the English language has become the most requested and widespread means of communication all over the world

Wearables at work:preferences from an employee’s perspective

This exploratory study aims to obtain a first impression of the wishes and needs of employees on the use of wearables at work for health promotion. 76 employ-ees with a mean age of 40 years old (SD ±11.7) filled in a survey after trying out a wearable. Most employees see the potential of using wearable devices for workplace health promotion. However, according to employees, some negative aspects should be overcome before wearables can effectively contribute to health promotion. The most mentioned negative aspects were poor visualization and un-pleasantness of wearing. Specifically for the workplace, employees were con-cerned about the privacy of data collection