13,718 research outputs found

    Web Portal Design Guidelines as Identified by Children through the Processes of Design and Evaluation

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    The Web is an important source of information for school projects, but young users do not always find it easy to locate relevant material. A critical factor in success is the portal through which they search or browse web content. Traditionally web portals have been designed by adults with young users in mind, but there is very little evidence that the latter make use of them. In this paper design guidelines are elaborated for such portals that are based upon focus group and operational evaluations by elementary school students of two prototype web portals designed by two intergenerational teams, each comprising elementary school students and adult designers. The evaluations offer strong support for involving children throughout the design process for portals that both in presentation and functionality reflect the cognitive and affective needs of young users rather than adults

    Analysing the Role of Interactivity in User Experience

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    An experimental investigation into the role of interaction in user experience (UX) with a controlled manipulation of interactivity features (e.g. avatars, interactive video) in a university information website is reported. The more interactive version had better affect and hedonic ratings, even though its perceived usability was worse. Analysis of qualitative data showed users were attracted to the interactive features, although they complained about poor usability. The results of the experiments are discussed to consider the role of interactivity in user experience and the differences between users’ quantitative judgements of UX and their comments on interactive features which reveal different perspectives

    Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality

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    Building upon a process-and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities. A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality -- primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies -- reveals patterns in youth's information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation. Looking at the phenomenon from an information-learning and educational perspective, the literature shows that youth develop competencies for personal goals that sometimes do not transfer to school, and are sometimes not appropriate for school. Thus far, educational initiatives to educate youth about search, evaluation, or creation have depended greatly on the local circumstances for their success or failure

    Enhancing video game performance through an individualized biocybernetic system

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    Biocybernetic systems are physiological software systems that explicitly utilize physiological signals to control or adapt software functionality (Pope et al., 1995.) These systems have tremendous potential for innovation in human computer interaction by using physiological signals to infer a user\u27s emotional and mental states (Allanson & Fairclough, 2004; Fairclough, 2008). Nevertheless, development of these systems has been ultimately hindered by two fundamental challenges. First, these systems make generalizations about physiological indicators of cognitive states across populations when, in fact, relationships between physiological responses and cognitive states are specific to each individual (Andreassi, 2006). Second, they often employ largely inconsistent retrospective techniques to subjectively infer user\u27s mental state (Fairclough, 2008). An individualized biocybernetic system was developed to address the fundamental challenges of biocybernetic research. This system was used to adapt video game difficulty through real-time classifications of physiological responses to subjective appraisals. A study was conducted to determine the system\u27s ability to improve player\u27s performance. The results provide evidence of significant task performance increase and higher attained task difficulty when players interacted with the game using the system than without. This work offers researchers with an alternative method for software adaptation by conforming to the individual characteristics of each user
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