Acceptance of a Remote Desktop Access System to Increase Workspace Awareness

Awareness systems are being designed and implemented to improve employee connections. This study examines the variables that affect the acceptance of an awareness system. The awareness system that was used for this research was a remote desktop access system. The independent variables investigated were the degree of detail that can be viewed on a desktop, whether the users can control who can access their desktops, whether the users can control when others have access to their desktops, the equality of access to others' desktops, and task-technology fit. In determining the effect of the independent variables on acceptance, the dependent variable, the mediating variables of privacy and fairness were taken into account. There was a preliminary survey conducted to determine appropriate situations to be used in the scenario descriptions for the survey for the main study. The methodology of policy-capturing surveys was utilized to conduct the survey for the main study in order to investigate the model developed in this study. The policy-capturing survey was pre-tested on University of Waterloo students. The main study was conducted in two different organizations, the subjects for the first study were employees from the Information Systems and Technology Department at the University of Waterloo and the subjects for the second study were employees from Ciber Incorporated. Results indicate that perceptions of privacy and perceptions of fairness have significant effects on acceptance. Also, perceptions of privacy and fairness are related to details in the design of the remote desktop access system. This research may be a contribution to this field since little research has been conducted in this area and implications can be drawn for future research on acceptance of awareness systems

A portfolio theory approach to ease navigation task of users

The way the users interact with Information Retrieval (IR) systems is an interesting topic of interest in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and IR. With the ever increasing information in the web, users are often lost in the vast information space. Navigating in the complex information space to find the required information, is often an abstruse task by users. One of the reasons is the difficulty in designing systems that would present the user with an optimal set of navigation options to support varying information needs. As a solution to the navigation problem, in this thesis we propose a method referred as interaction portfolio theory, based on Markowitz's 'Modern Portfolio theory', a theory of finance. It provides the users with N optimal interaction options in each iteration, by taking into account user's goal expressed via interaction during the task, but also the risk related to a potentially suboptimal choice made by the user. In each iteration, the proposed method learns the relevant interaction options from user behaviour interactively and optimizes relevance and diversity to allow the user to accomplish the task in a shorter interaction sequence. This theory can be applied to any IR system to help users to retrieve the required information efficiently

Privacy-preserving Platforms for Computation on Hybrid Clouds

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Privacy aware surveillance system design

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Architecture and Remote Interaction Techniques for Digital Media Exchange across 3G Mobile Devices

For users away from the office or home, there is an increasing demand for mobile solutions that offer effective collaborative facilities on the move. The mobile cellular device, or “smart phone”, can offer a ubiquitous platform to deliver such services, provided that its many physical and technological constraints can be overcome. In an effort to better support mobile collaboration, this thesis presents a contributing Mobile Exchange Architecture (MEA) designed to improve upon the capabilities provided by mobile devices to enable synchronous exchange of digital media during a phone conversation using wireless networks and cellular devices. This research includes the design and development of one such MEA in the form of a fully functional Photo-conferencing service, supporting shared remote interaction techniques, simultaneous voice communication and seamless digital media exchange between remote and collocated mobile users. Furthermore, through systematic design, experimental evaluations and field studies we evaluate the effects of different shared remote interaction techniques – 'pointing', 'scaling', 'mixed' and 'hybrid' – assessing the task effort required by users when interacting around shared images across resource constrained mobile devices. This thesis presents a direction for the future development of technologies and methods to enable a new era of scalable always-to-hand mobile collaborative environments.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Sensing Activity in Video Images

Video-based awareness tools increase familiarity among remote group members and provide pre-communication information. Low-cost iconic indicators provide less but more succinct information than video images while preserving privacy. Observations of and feedback from users of our video awareness tool suggest that an activity sensing feature along with a variety of privacy options combines advantages of both the video images and iconic indicator approaches. We introduced the activity sensing feature in response to user requests. It derives activity information from video images and provides options to control privacy and improves the usability of video-based awareness tools