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

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

An interface to virtual environments for people who are blind using Wii technology - mental models and navigation

Accessible games, both for serious and for entertainment purposes, would allow inclusion and participation for those with disabilities. Research into the development of accessible games, and accessible virtual environments, is discussed. Research into accessible Virtual Environments has demonstrated great potential for allowing people who are blind to explore new spaces, reducing their reliance on guides, and aiding development of more efficient spatial maps and strategies. Importantly, Lahav and Mioduser (2005, 2008) have demonstrated that, when exploring virtual spaces, people who are blind use more and different strategies than when exploring real physical spaces, and develop relatively accurate spatial representations of them. The present paper describes the design, development and evaluation of a system in which a virtual environment may be explored by people who are blind using Nintendo Wii devices, with auditory and haptic feedback. The nature of the various types of feedback is considered, with the aim of creating an intuitive and usable system. Using Wii technology has many advantages, not least of which are that it is mainstream, readily available and cheap. The potential of the system for exploration and navigation is demonstrated. Results strongly support the possibilities of the system for facilitating and supporting the construction of cognitive maps and spatial strategies. Intelligent support is discussed. Systems such as the present one will facilitate the development of accessible games, and thus enable Universal Design and accessible interactive technology to become more accepted and widespread

Analysing the Role of Interactivity in User Experience

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

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

Player experience and deceptive expectations of difficulty adaptation in digital games

Increasingly, digital games are including adaptive features that adjust the level of difficulty to match the skills of individual players. The intention is to improve and prolong the player experience by allowing the player to have the feeling of challenge without it being overwhelming and leading to repeated failure and frustration. Previous work has shown that player experience is indeed improved by such adaptations but also that the player experience can be improved by simply claiming such an adaptation is present even when it is not. It is therefore possible that claims about adaptations and the actual adaptations could interact and not lead to the intended outcomes for the players or worse disappoint players. This paper reports on two studies that were conducted to experimentally investigate the interaction between game adaptations and player information about adaptations on the player experience, specifically their sense of immersion in the game. For this, two games were developed using two different kinds of adaptations to adjust difficulty based on players’ performance in the game. Participants were provided with information about game adaptations independently of whether the adaptations were present. The results suggest that players felt more immersed in the game when told that the game adapts to them, regardless of whether the adaptation was present in the game or not. This effect was observed in both games despite their different adaptations and it remained prominent even during longer gaming sessions. These findings demonstrate that players’ knowledge of adaptations influences their experience independently of adaptations. In this particular context, the knowledge reinforced the experience of the adaptations. This suggests that, at least in some circumstances, developers do not need to be concerned about negative effects of telling players about in-game adaptations

Enhancing video game performance through an individualized biocybernetic system

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