A Comparative Analysis of Style of User Interface Look and Feel in a Synchronous Computer Supported Cooperative Work Environment

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the style of a user interface (i.e., its look and feel) has an effect on the usability of a synchronous computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) environment for delivering Internet-based collaborative content. The problem motivating this study is that people who are located in different places need to be able to communicate with one another. One way to do this is by using complex computer tools that allow users to share information, documents, programs, etc. As an increasing number of business organizations require workers to use these types of complex communication tools, it is important to determine how users regard these types of tools and whether they are perceived to be useful. If a tool, or interface, is not perceived to be useful then it is often not used, or used ineffectively. As organizations strive to improve communication with and among users by providing more Internet-based collaborative environments, the users' experience in this form of delivery may be tied to a style of user interface look and feel that could negatively affect their overall acceptance and satisfaction of the collaborative environment. The significance of this study is that it applies the technology acceptance model (TAM) as a tool for evaluating style of user interface look and feel in a collaborative environment, and attempts to predict which factors of that model, perceived ease of use and/or perceived usefulness, could lead to better acceptance of collaborative tools within an organization

Providing a Low Latency User Experience in a High Latency Application

Through the use of particular visual effects, we provide a low latency user experience, even when extremely large latencies occur in an application. We demonstrate these effects in a wide-area distributed virtual reality application. These effects include the use of motion blur, transparency, and defocusing. While the effects incur a performance penalty, the penalty is predictable, unlike the lag induced by network delays. Thus, we provide immediate feedback to each participant, even when the network prevents informationmore useful than the fact that delays are occurring. When updates are finally received, we use the same effects to provide coherent updates to the user's information, without the jarring discontinuities that otherwise would confuse a participant's understanding of the environment. CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.3.6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques - Interaction Techniques; I.3.2 [Computer Graphics]: Graphics Systems - Distributed /network graph..

An investigation into the cognitive effects of delayed visual feedback

Abstract unavailable please refer to PD