The Impact of Interface Quality on Trust in Web Retailers

Web retailing is expected to grow at aggressive rates in future years. One of the most important factors that is slowing down this growth is the lack of trust of potential customers. So, as transactions through the internet develop and mature, success will largely be dependent on gaining and0501ntaining this trust. It has been suggested that the quality of the user interface of the Web site is a determinant of the initial establishment of trust. In this article, we describe a study where 66 subjects were asked to perform some predefined book purchasing task in a series of sites with varying interface quality. We found a strong relationship between interface quality and trust. We also found some components of user interface quality to be more important than others and discuss the implications for Web site design. Le manque de confiance constitue une des barrières les plus importantes à l'adoption et au développement du commerce électronique. Centré sur le commerce électronique de détail, ce travail présente un modèle permettant d'analyser le développement de la confiance du consommateur en fonction des caractéristiques de ce dernier - sa propension - et de la perception qu'il a de certaines caractéristiques du commerçant, soit l'intégrité, l'habilité et la bienveillance de ce dernier. L'utilisabilité de l'interface graphique a été retenue comme étant le facteur-clé en ce qui concerne la perception de ces caractéristiques. Le rôle de chacune des dimensions composant l'utilisabilité a donc été étudié et mis en évidence relativement à la confiance développée par le consommateur.User interface, laboratory experiment, trust, usability, electronic retailing, web design, Interface utilisateur, expérimentation en laboratoire, confiance, b2c, commerce électronique (détail), design de site web

Northern Sparks

An “episode of light” in Canada sparked by Expo 67 when new art forms, innovative technologies, and novel institutional and policy frameworks emerged together. Understanding how experimental art catalyzes technological innovation is often prized yet typically reduced to the magic formula of “creativity.” In Northern Sparks, Michael Century emphasizes the role of policy and institutions by showing how novel art forms and media technologies in Canada emerged during a period of political and social reinvention, starting in the 1960s with the energies unleashed by Expo 67. Debunking conventional wisdom, Century reclaims innovation from both its present-day devotees and detractors by revealing how experimental artists critically challenge as well as discover and extend the capacities of new technologies. Century offers a series of detailed cross-media case studies that illustrate the cross-fertilization of art, technology, and policy. These cases span animation, music, sound art and acoustic ecology, cybernetic cinema, interactive installation art, virtual reality, telecommunications art, software applications, and the emergent metadiscipline of human-computer interaction. They include Norman McLaren's “proto-computational” film animations; projects in which the computer itself became an agent, as in computer-aided musical composition and choreography; an ill-fated government foray into interactive networking, the videotext system Telidon; and the beginnings of virtual reality at the Banff Centre. Century shows how Canadian artists approached new media technologies as malleable creative materials, while Canada undertook a political reinvention alongside its centennial celebrations. Northern Sparks offers a uniquely nuanced account of innovation in art and technology illuminated by critical policy analysis

An approach to human-machine teaming in legal investigations using anchored narrative visualisation and machine learning

During legal investigations, analysts typically create external representations of an investigated domain as resource for cognitive offloading, reflection and collaboration. For investigations involving very large numbers of documents as evidence, creating such representations can be slow and costly, but essential. We believe that software tools, including interactive visualisation and machine learning, can be transformative in this arena, but that design must be predicated on an understanding of how such tools might support and enhance investigator cognition and team-based collaboration. In this paper, we propose an approach to this problem by: (a) allowing users to visually externalise their evolving mental models of an investigation domain in the form of thematically organized Anchored Narratives; and (b) using such narratives as a (more or less) tacit interface to cooperative, mixed initiative machine learning. We elaborate our approach through a discussion of representational forms significant to legal investigations and discuss the idea of linking such representations to machine learning

A Framework for Computational Design and Adaptation of Extended Reality User Interfaces

To facilitate high quality interaction during the regular use of computing systems, it is essential that the user interface (UI) deliver content and components in an appropriate manner. Although extended reality (XR) is emerging as a new computing platform, we still have a limited understanding of how best to design and present interactive content to users in such immersive environments. Adaptive UIs offer a promising approach for optimal presentation in XR as the user's environment, tasks, capabilities, and preferences vary under changing context. In this position paper, we present a design framework for adapting various characteristics of content presented in XR. We frame these as five considerations that need to be taken into account for adaptive XR UIs: What?, How Much?, Where?, How?, and When?. With this framework, we review literature on UI design and adaptation to reflect on approaches that have been adopted or developed in the past towards identifying current gaps and challenges, and opportunities for applying such approaches in XR. Using our framework, future work could identify and develop novel computational approaches for achieving successful adaptive user interfaces in such immersive environments.Comment: 5 pages, CHI 2023 Workshop on The Future of Computational Approaches for Understanding and Adapting User Interface

HandPainter – 3D sketching in VR with hand-based physical proxy

3D sketching in virtual reality (VR) enables users to create 3D virtual objects intuitively and immersively. However, previous studies showed that mid-air drawing may lead to inaccurate sketches. To address this issue, we propose to use one hand as a canvas proxy and the index finger of the other hand as a 3D pen. To this end, we first perform a formative study to compare two-handed interaction with tablet-pen interaction for VR sketching. Based on the findings of this study, we design HandPainter, a VR sketching system which focuses on the direct use of two hands for 3D sketching without requesting any tablet, pen, or VR controller. Our implementation is based on a pair of VR gloves, which provide hand tracking and gesture capture. We devise a set of intuitive gestures to control various functionalities required during 3D sketching, such as canvas panning and drawing positioning. We show the effectiveness of HandPainter by presenting a number of sketching results and discussing the outcomes of a user study-based comparison with mid-air drawing and tablet-based sketching tools

The Internet Implementation of the Hierarchical Aggregate Assessment Process with the “Cluster” Wi-Fi E-Learning and EAssessment Application — A Particular Case of Teamwork Assessment

A Wi-Fi e-learning and e-assessment Internet application named “Cluster” was developed in the context of a research project concerning the implementation of a teamwork assessment mobile application able to assess teams with several levels of hierarchy. Usually, teamwork assessment software and Internet applications for several hierarchy level teams are included in the field of Management Information Systems (MIS). However, some assessment tasks in teams with several levels of hierarchy and assessment may be performed in an educational context, and the existing applications for the assessment and evaluation of teams with several levels of hierarchy are not applications dedicated to the assessment of students in an educational context. The “Cluster” application is able to present the course material, to train the students in teams as well as to present individual and team assessment tasks. The application’s special functionalities enable it to assess the teams at several levels of hierarchy, which constitute the hierarchical aggregate assessment process. In effect, the members of the teams may have appointments of team member, team leader and team administrator that supervises team leaders. This application can therefore evaluate simultaneously different knowledge and skills in the same assessment task based on the hierarchical position of the team member. The summative evaluation of the application consists of work to submit as well as objective examinations in HTML format, while the formative evaluation is composed of assessment grid computer forms of self-assessment and peer assessment. The application contains two mutually exclusive modes, the assessor mode and the student mode. The assessor mode allows the teacher to create courses, manage students, form the teams and also assess the students and the teams in a summative manner. The student mode allows the students to follow courses, write exams, submit homework, perform in teams and submit self- and peers formative assessment. The theoretical consideration of the project establishes the link between hierarchical aggregate assessment applications and management information systems (MIS). The application is an electronic portfolio (e-portfolio) management system in the competency-based learning and an Internet test administration system in the mastery learning approach. The aim of the chapter is to introduce the reader to the field of hierarchical aggregate assessment and to show how to implement complex assessment tasks with several levels of hierarchy into an Internet software application

Three‐Dimensional Time‐Lapse Geoelectrical Monitoring of Water Infiltration in an Experimental Mine Waste Rock Pile

Open-pit mines often generate large quantities of waste rocks that are usually stored in waste rock piles (WRPs). When the waste rocks contain reactive minerals (mainly sulfides), water and air circulation can lead to the generation of contaminated drainage. An experimental WRP was built at the Lac Tio mine (Canada) to validate a new disposal method that aims to limit water infiltration into reactive waste rocks. More specifically, a flow control layer was placed on top of the pile, which represents a typical bench level, to divert water toward the outer edge. Hydrogeological sensors and geophysical electrodes were installed for monitoring moisture distribution in the pile during infiltration events. A three-dimensional (3D) time-lapse hydrogeophysical monitoring program was conducted to assess water infiltration and movement. Readings from the 192 circular electrodes buried in the WRP were used to reconstruct the 3D bulk electrical resistivity (ER) variations over time. A significant effort was devoted to assessing the spatiotemporal evolution of water ER because the bulk ER is strongly affected by water quality (and content). The water ER was used as a tracer to monitor the infiltration and flow of resistive and conductive waters. The results indicate that the inclined surface layer efficiently diverts a large part of the added water away from the core of the pile. Local and global models of water infiltration explaining both bulk and water ER variations are proposed. The results shown here are consistent with hydrogeological data and provide additional insights to characterize the behavior of the pile

Map design for visually impaired people: past, present, and future research

International audienceOrientation and mobility are amongst the most important challenges for visually impaired people. Tactile maps can provide them with spatial knowledge of their environment, thereby reducing fear related to travelling in space. To date, raised-line paper maps have been used to make geographic information accessible, but these paper maps have significant limitations with regards to content and the presentation of information. Recent advances in technology may help to design usable interactive maps that overcome such limitations. In this paper, we first review different accessible map concepts. We then present our design of an interactive map prototype, and provide evidence of this interactive map’s high user satisfaction and efficiency as compared to a regular raised-line paper map. To conclude, we suggest that advances in interactive technologies (e.g., haptic touch surfaces) provide a unique opportunity to design usable maps in the near future