Social Networking Services on Mobile Devices: User Interface Designs and User Experience Studies

People commonly use social networking services (SNSs) on their mobile devices. Web sites, mobile applications and mobile widgets are the typical user interfaces (UIs) used to access SNSs. These UIs are restricted to content from single services, which constrain people’s simultaneous browsing of multiple SNSs. Previous studies propose workarounds – such as displaying SNS content in augmented phonebooks – to combine multiple SNSs. These studies, however, do not provide a genuine solution to the user’s problem. The objective of this dissertation is to explore novel UI designs for in-depth integration of multiple SNSs on a mobile device and to evaluate the user experience (UX) that these designs support. Here UX covers a person's perceptions and responses in using an interactive product. This dissertation explores mobile use of SNSs from a human–computer interaction (HCI) perspective. Following the design research approach, the study investigated novel means of using multiple SNSs on mobile devices in a concept called ‘LinkedUI’. The work focused on SNSs, although the results could also be relevant to mobile use of other Web services. Three main results emerged from this research. Firstly, in their use of mobile devices, people prefer to be aware of relevant SNS content when taking micro breaks. They often do not aim for concrete goals other than keeping informed and updated. Current UIs limit these browsing activities, as people need to interact with UI elements intensively before accessing the content in which they are interested. Secondly, LinkedUI introduces a holistic device UI – regulating all functions of a mobile device – based on hypertext navigation. This supports aggregation of content from multiple services and automatic filtering to highlight relevant content. User evaluations showed that these designs contributed to positive user experiences of SNS use on mobile devices. The third main result addresses usage patterns and user experiences of LinkedUI like mobile UIs. People frequently check SNSs in brief sessions. They attend to content selectively, mainly content directed to them, recently shared, or shared by relevant contacts. These factors aid in prediction of the relevance of the SNS content. In terms of UX, LinkedUI rewards users with enhanced awareness experience. It is easy to use and grants users a sufficient sense of control in the face of constant information flow. The main contribution of this dissertation is to characterise user activities on the mobile Web, while the associated research created and evaluated novel means for accessing SNSs on mobile devices. Research discussed in this dissertation resulted in UI designs that explored one potential direction for the future mobile UI development and influenced the Notifications home view of some Nokia Symbian and MeeGo smartphones. This dissertation reveals usage patterns and UX associated with mobile use of SNSs, and it proposes implications for future research and development in this domain

Evolution and usability of mobile phone interaction styles

Over one billion people own or use cellular mobile telephones. Therefore, industry practitioners are faced with a question: how big steps can they take when designing the user interfaces for their new products, or how closely should they stick with the already existing user interface conventions that may already be familiar to the consumers. The objective of this research work is to create and communicate new knowledge for design and usability practitioners about how to design and evolve interaction style conventions in mainstream, voice-centric mobile telephones. In the context of this study, interaction style denotes the framework consisting of the physical interaction objects, the abstract interaction elements, and the associated behavior or interaction conventions that are applied throughout the core functionality of the mobile phone, but excludes the stylistic appearance elements of the user interface. The main research problem — how do mobile phone interaction style changes affect the initial usability of a mobile phone for users with earlier experience with mobile phones — is approached via several methods. A literature study compares the interaction styles applied in mainstream computing domains against the aspects relevant in the mobile phones domain. A heuristic analysis of contemporary mobile phones is used to formulate an understanding of the available interaction styles and analyze whether there is convergence towards specific types of interaction styles in the industry. An empirical usability testing experiment with 38 test users is conducted with a novel mobile phone interaction style to investigate differences between users who are already familiar with different mobile phone interaction styles. The study reveals that interaction styles applied in contemporary mobile telephones are designed around menu navigation, and they implement the three primary operations — Select, Back and Menu access — with dedicated hardkeys, context-sensitive softkeys, or using special control devices like joysticks or jog dials. The control keys in the contemporary interaction styles are converging around various two- and three-softkey conventions. The aspects related to indirect manipulation and small displays pose specific usability and UI design challenges on mobile phone user interfaces. The study shows that the mobile handset manufacturers are applying their usually proprietary interaction styles in a rather consistent manner in their products, with the notable exception of mobile Internet browsers that often break the underlying interaction style consistency. Based on the results from the empirical usability testing, we claim that despite differences between interaction styles in contemporary mobile phones, users do not face significant difficulties when transferring to a novel mobile phone model.reviewe

Was Suchmaschinen nicht können. Holistische Entitätssuche auf Web Daten

Mehr als 50% aller Web Suchanfragen sind entitätsbezogen. Benutzer suchen entweder nach Entitäten oder nach Entitätsinformationen. Dennoch solche Anfragen von Suchmaschinen nicht gut unterstützt. Aufbauend auf dem Konzept des semiotischen Dreiecks aus der kognitiven Psychologie, haben wir drei Anfragetypen zur Entitätssuche identifiziert: typbasierte Anfragen – Suche nach Entitäten eines gegebenen Typs, prototypbasierte Anfragen – Suche nach Entitäten mit bestimmten Eigenschaften, und instanzbasierte Anfragen – Suche nach Entitäten die ähnlich zu einer gegebene Entität sind. Für typbasierte Anfragen haben wir eine Methode entwickelt die query expansion mit einer self-supervised vocabulary learning Technik auf strukturierten und unstrukturierten Daten verbindet. Unser Ansatz liefert einen guten Kompromiss zwischen Precision und Recall. Für prototypbasierte Anfragen stellen wir ProSWIP vor. Dies ist ein eigenschaftsbasiertes System um Entitäten aus dem Web abzurufen. Da aber die Anzahl der Eigenschaften die durch die Benutzer bereitgestellt werden relativ klein sein kann, baut ProSWIP auf direkten Fragen und Benutzer Feedback um die Menge der Eigenschaften zu einer Menge welche die Intentionen der Benutzer korrekt erfasst zu erweitern. Unsere Experimente zeigen dass mit maximal vier Fragen eine perfekte Precision erreicht wird. In dem Fall von instanzbasierten Anfragen besteht die Schwierigkeit darin eine Anfrageform zu finden die die Benutzerintentionen eindeutig macht. Wir stellen eine minimalistische instanzbasierte Anfrage, die aus einem Beispiel und dem entsprechenden Entitätstypen besteht vor. Mit Hilfe des Konzepts der Familienähnlichkeit entwickeln wir eine praktische Lösung um Entitäten mit Bezug zur der Anfragenentität direkt aus dem Web abzurufen. Unser Ansatz erzielt sogar für Anfragen, die für standard Entitätssuchaufgaben wie related entity finding problematisch waren, gute Ergebnisse. Entitätszusammenfassung ist ein anderer Typ von entitätszentrischen Anfragen, der Informationen bezüglich einer Entität bereitstellt. Googles Knowledge Graph ist der Stand der Technik für solche Aufgaben. Aber das Zurückgreifen auf manuell erstellte Knowledgebases schließt weniger bekannten Entitäten für das Knowledge Graph aus. Wir schlagen daher vor datengetriebene Ansätze zu nutzen. Wir sind überzeugt dass das Bewältigen dieser vier Anfragetypen eine holistische Entitätssuche auf Web Daten für die nächste Generation von Suchmaschinen ermöglicht.More than 50% of all Web queries are entity related. Users search either for entities or for entity information. Still, search engines do not accommodate entity-centric search very well. Building on the concept of the semiotic triangle from cognitive psychology, which models entity types in terms of intensions and extensions, we identified three types of queries for retrieving entities: type-based queries - searching for entities of a given type, prototype-based queries - searching for entities having certain properties, and instance-based queries - searching for entities being similar to a given entity. For type-based queries we present a method that combines query expansion with a self-supervised vocabulary learning technique built on both structured and unstructured data. Our approach is able to achieve a good tradeoff between precision and recall. For prototype-based queries we propose ProSWIP, a property-based system for retrieving entities from the Web. Since the number of properties given by the users can be quite small, ProSWIP relies on direct questions and user feedback to expand the set of properties to a set that captures the user’s intentions correctly. Our experiments show that within a maximum of four questions the system achieves perfect precision of the selected entities. In the case of instance-based queries the first challenge is to establish a query form that allows for disambiguating user intentions without putting too much cognitive pressure on the user. We propose a minimalistic instance-based query comprising the example entity and intended entity type. With this query and building on the concept of family resemblance we present a practical way for retrieving entities directly from the Web. Our approach can even cope with queries which have proven problematic for benchmark tasks like related entity finding. Providing information about a given entity, entity summarization is another kind of entity-centric query. Google’s Knowledge Graph is the state of the art for this task. But relying entirely on manually curated knowledge bases, the Knowledge Graph does not include all new and less known entities. We propose to use a data-driven approach. Our experiments on real-world entities show the superiority of our method. We are confident that mastering these four query types enables holistic entity search on Web data for the next generation of search engines

A taxonomy of attacks and a survey of defence mechanisms for semantic social engineering attacks

Social engineering is used as an umbrella term for a broad spectrum of computer exploitations that employ a variety of attack vectors and strategies to psychologically manipulate a user. Semantic attacks are the specific type of social engineering attacks that bypass technical defences by actively manipulating object characteristics, such as platform or system applications, to deceive rather than directly attack the user. Commonly observed examples include obfuscated URLs, phishing emails, drive-by downloads, spoofed web- sites and scareware to name a few. This paper presents a taxonomy of semantic attacks, as well as a survey of applicable defences. By contrasting the threat landscape and the associated mitigation techniques in a single comparative matrix, we identify the areas where further research can be particularly beneficial

Modeling and measuring Business/IT Alignment by using a complex-network approach

Tese de doutoramento em Tecnologias e Sistemas de InformaçãoBusiness/IT Alignment is an information systems research field with a long existence and a high number of researchers and represents a central thinking direction over the entanglement between business and information systems. lt aims to achieve a paradigm, on which there is a high degree of visibility and availability of information about the information systems sociomateriality. _ Complex-networks constitute an approach to the study of the emergent properties of complex-systems that strongly focuses and relies on models and measures, through which the system interdependence is built. Severa! characteristics of complex-networks are: structural or functional topology; domain independent; quantification of elements' relationships; visibility and capture of emergent properties. This thesis aims to contribute for the appropriate use of complex-networks' models and measures in the effort of the Business/ IT Alignment. lt outlines a profiling framework that introduces a global analysis of the information systems enactment. The profiling framework is applied to exploratory cases to uncover the emergent nature of the Business/ IT Alignment through its information systems virtual organization. From the analysis of the exploratory cases, information systems efforts to accomplish Business/ IT Alignment are inferred.O alinhamento entre o negócio e o IT é um campo de investigação com uma longa existência e concentrando um grande numero de investigadores representando uma direção central no pensamento sobre a relação entre o negocio e o IT. Pretende alcançar um paradigma no qual existe um elevado grau de visibilidade e disponibilidade de informação sobre a relação sociomaterial que constitui o sistema de informação. As redes-complexas constituem uma abordagem ao estudo de propriedades emergentes de sistemas-complexos e que se foca e sustenta em modelos e medidas através das quais constrói a interdependência do sistema. Diversas contribuições das redes complexas são: a topologia estrutural e funcional afecta sempre a função; separada do dominio de aplicação; quantificação das relações entre os elementos; visibilidade e captura de propriedades emergentes. Esta tese espera contribuir para a utilização adequada aos sistemas de informação dos modelos e medidas das redes-complexas no esforços de alinhamento entre o negócio e o IT. Desenvolve uma framework de caracterização que introduz uma análise global aos sistemas de informação. A framework é aplicada a casos exploratórios de forma a revelar a natureza emergente do alinhamento entre o negócio e o IT através da organização virtual dos sistemas de informaçã

Advanced user authentification for mobile devices

Access to the full-text thesis is no longer available at the author's request, due to 3rd party copyright restrictions. Access removed on 28.11.2016 by CS (TIS).Metadata merged with duplicate record ( http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/1101 - now deleted) on 20.12.2016 by CS (TIS).Recent years have witnessed widespread adoption of mobile devices. Whereas initial popularity was driven by voice telephony services, capabilities are now broadening to allow an increasing range of data orientated services. Such services serve to extend the range of sensitive data accessible through such devices and will in turn increase the requirement for reliable authentication of users. This thesis considers the authentication requirements of mobile devices and proposes novel mechanisms to improve upon the current state of the art. The investigation begins with an examination of existing authentication techniques, and illustrates a wide range of drawbacks. A survey of end-users reveals that current methods are frequently misused and considered inconvenient, and that enhanced methods of security are consequently required. To this end, biometric approaches are identified as a potential means of overcoming the perceived constraints, offering an opportunity for security to be maintained beyond pointof- entry, in a continuous and transparent fashion. The research considers the applicability of different biometric approaches for mobile device implementation, and identifies keystroke analysis as a technique that can offer significant potential within mobile telephony. Experimental evaluations reveal the potential of the technique when applied to a Personal Identification Number (PIN), telephone number and text message, with best case equal error rates (EER) of 9%, 8% and 18% respectively. In spite of the success of keystroke analysis for many users, the results demonstrate the technique is not uniformly successful across the whole of a given population. Further investigation suggests that the same will be true for other biometrics, and therefore that no single authentication technique could be relied upon to account for all the users in all interaction scenarios. As such, a novel authentication architecture is specified, which is capable of utilising the particular hardware configurations and computational capabilities of devices to provide a robust, modular and composite authentication mechanism. The approach, known as IAMS (Intelligent Authentication Management System), is capable of utilising a broad range of biometric and secret knowledge based approaches to provide a continuous confidence measure in the identity of the user. With a high confidence, users are given immediate access to sensitive services and information, whereas with lower levels of confidence, restrictions can be placed upon access to sensitive services, until subsequent reassurance of a user's identity. The novel architecture is validated through a proof-of-concept prototype. A series of test scenarios are used to illustrate how IAMS would behave, given authorised and impostor authentication attempts. The results support the use of a composite authentication approach to enable the non-intrusive authentication of users on mobile devices.Orange Personal Communication Services Ltd