Human-machine communication for educational systems design

This book contains the papers presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on the Basics of man-machine communication for the design of educational systems, held August 16-26, 1993, in Eindhoven, The Netherland

Auditory Displays for People with Visual Impairments during Travel

Menschen mit Blindheit oder Sehbehinderungen begegnen beim Reisen zahlreichen Barrieren, was sich auf die Lebensqualität auswirkt. Obwohl spezielle elektronische Reisehilfen schon seit vielen Jahren im Mittelpunkt der Forschung stehen, werden sie von der Zielgruppe nach wie vor kaum genutzt. Dies liegt unter anderem daran, dass die von den Nutzern benötigten Informationen von der Technologie nur unzureichend bereitgestellt werden. Außerdem entsprechen die Schnittstellen selten den Bedürfnissen der Nutzer. In der vorliegender Arbeit gehen wir auf diese Defizite ein und definieren die Anforderungen für barrierefreies Reisen in Bezug auf den Informationsbedarf (Was muss vermittelt werden?) und die nichtfunktionalen Anforderungen (Wie muss es vermittelt werden?). Außerdem schlagen wir verschiedene auditive Displays vor, die die Bedürfnisse von Menschen mit Sehbeeinträchtigungen während einer Reise berücksichtigen. Wir entwerfen, implementieren und evaluieren unsere Schnittstellen nach einem nutzerzentriertem Ansatz, wobei wir während des gesamten Prozesses Nutzer und Experten aus diesem Bereich einbeziehen. In einem ersten Schritt erheben wir den Informationsbedarf von Menschen mit Behinderungen im Allgemeinen und von Menschen mit Sehbeeinträchtigungen im Besonderen, wenn sie sich in Gebäuden bewegen. Außerdem vergleichen wir die gesammelten Informationen mit dem, was derzeit in OpenStreetMap (OSM), einer freien geografischen Datenbank, kartiert werden kann, und machen Vorschläge zur Schließung der Lücke. Unser Ziel ist es, die Kartierung aller benötigten Informationen zu ermöglichen, um sie in Lösungen zur Unterstützung des unabhängigen Reisens zu verwenden. Nachdem wir die Frage beantwortet haben, welche Informationen benötigt werden, gehen wir weiter und beantworten die Frage, wie diese den Nutzern vermittelt werden können. Wir definieren eine Sammlung nicht-funktionaler Anforderungen, die wir in einer Befragung mit 22 Mobilitätstrainern verfeinern und bewerten. Anschließend schlagen wir eine Grammatik - oder anders ausgedrückt, eine strukturierte Art der Informationsvermittlung - für Navigationsanweisungen bei Reisen im Freien vor, die Straßenränder, das Vorhandensein von Gehwegen und Kreuzungen berücksichtigt - alles wichtige Informationen für Menschen mit Sehbeeinträchtigungen. Darüber hinaus können mit unserer Grammatik auch Orientierungspunkte, Sehenswürdigkeiten und Hindernisse vermittelt werden, was die Reise zu einem ganzheitlichen und sichereren Erlebnis macht. Wir implementieren unsere Grammatik in einen bestehenden Prototyp und evaluieren sie mit der Zielgruppe. Es hat sich gezeigt, dass in Gebäuden Beschreibungen der Umgebung die Erstellung von mentalen Karten unterstützen und damit die Erkundung und spontane Entscheidungsfindung besser fördern als Navigationsanweisungen. Wir definieren daher eine Grammatik für die Vermittlung von Informationen über die Umgebung in Innenräumen für Menschen mit Sehbeeinträchtigungen. Wir bewerten die Grammatik in einer Online-Studie mit 8 Nutzern aus der Zielgruppe. Wir zeigen, dass die Nutzer strukturierte Sätze mit fester Wortreihenfolge benötigen. Schließlich implementieren wir die Grammatik als Proof-of-Concept in eine bestehende prototypische App. Sprachausgabe ist zwar Stand der Technik im Bereich der Ausgabeschnittstellen für Menschen mit Sehbeeinträchtigungen, hat aber auch Nachteile: es ist für Menschen mit Leseschwäche unzugänglich und kann für manche Nutzer zu langsam sein. Wir nehmen uns dieses Problems an und untersuchen den Einsatz von Sonifikation in Form von auditiven Symbolen in Kombination mit Parameter-Mapping zur Vermittlung von Informationen über Objekte und deren Verortung in der Umgebung. Da eine erste Evaluierung positive Ergebnisse lieferte, erstellten wir in einem nutzerzentrierten Entwicklungsansatz einen Datensatz mit kurzen auditiven Symbolen für 40 Alltagsgegenstände. Wir evaluieren den Datensatz mit 16 blinden Menschen und zeigen, dass die Töne intuitiv sind. Schließlich vergleichen wir in einer Nutzerstudie mit 5 Teilnehmern Sprachausgabe mit nicht-sprachlicher Sonifikation. Wir zeigen, dass Sonifikation für die Vermittlung von groben Informationen über Objekte in der Umgebung genau so gut geeignet ist wie Sprache, was die Benutzerfreundlichkeit angeht. Abschließend listen wir einige Vorteile von Sprache und Sonifikation auf, die zum Vergleich und als Entscheidungshilfe dienen sollen. Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit den Bedürfnissen von Menschen mit Sehbeeinträchtigungen während der Reise in Bezug auf die benötigten Informationen und Schnittstellen. In einem nutzerzentrierten Ansatz schlagen wir verschiedene akustische Schnittstellen vor, die auf sprachlicher und nicht-sprachlicher Sonifikation basieren. Anhand mehrerer Nutzerstudien, an denen sowohl Nutzer als auch Experten beteiligt sind, entwerfen, implementieren und evaluieren wir unsere Schnittstellen. Wir zeigen, dass elektronische Reisehilfen in der Lage sein müssen, große Mengen an Informationen auf strukturierte Weise zu vermitteln, jedoch angepasst an den Nutzungskontext und die Präferenzen und Fähigkeiten der Nutzer

The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers’ Narrative Transportation

Stories, and their ability to transport their audience, constitute a central part of human life and consumption experience. Integrating previous literature derived from fields as diverse as anthropology, marketing, psychology, communication, consumer, and literary studies, this article offers a review of two decades’ worth of research on narrative transportation, the phenomenon in which consumers mentally enter a world that a story evokes. Despite the relevance of narrative transportation for storytelling and narrative persuasion, extant contributions seem to lack systematization. The authors conceive the extended transportation-imagery model (ETIM), which provides not only a comprehensive model that includes the antecedents and consequences of narrative transportation but also a multidisciplinary framework in which cognitive psychology and consumer culture theory cross-fertilize this field of inquiry. The authors test the model using a quantitative meta-analysis of 132 effect sizes of narrative transportation from 76 published and unpublished articles and identify fruitful directions for further research

Designing effective animated icons for children

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Information Technology is an essential part of the National Curriculum in the UK, yet despite the growth of IT in schools that this has generated, there is evidence that children are not to be taken into consideration enough when designing aspects of educational software. The functionality available in education software packages tends to be made available through static icons, yet there are problems with their implementation as they can at times cause confusion for the user in terms of the functionality that they are aiming to represent. In order to make icons in educational software more effective, and to meet the needs of children, of the use of animated icons has been suggested. Animating the function of the icon aims to provide a clarification of its meaning and demonstrate its capabilities, as well as explaining to the user the method of use. However, there is little information available on how to support the design of effective animated icons. Focusing on a target age group of 11 to 12 year olds, this thesis argues that some form of support mechanism should be developed for the design of animated icons to ensure that consideration is being given to the types of object that children find useful and accessible. A set of dimensions where guidance on visual aspects of the icon may be useful are developed through analysis of relevant literature and it is highlighted that they do not provide any insight into what types of object may be helpful in designing the animated icons. This thesis then argues that animated icon design can be usefully informed by psychological theories of learning and that using such theories as a base may provide an understanding of how children identify icon functionality. The thesis introduces and critiques Piaget’s Genetic Epistemology theory, Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory and Leontjev’s Activity Theory, identifying aspects of the theories which may be of relevance to the design of animated icons. By investigating the relationships between the dimensions of animated icons and the concepts from the theories of learning, insights are developed into the impact of visual factors on a child’s identification and understanding of icon functionality. The thesis goes on to report a practical study where the sample is a group of 11 to 12 year old children. The practical study consists of three phases. The first phase gathers data related to the children’s familiarity with computers and the types of software packages that they use. The second phase looks at their use and recognition of static icon functionality. The last phase involves using the findings from phases 1 and 2 to create and evaluate a set of animated icons, the development of which is based on the relationships between the concepts from theories of learning and the identified dimensions of animated icons. The analysis of the evidence from the practical study leads to a small set of design principles being proposed that are aimed to provide advice/guidance on how to design animated icons effectively for this target age group, with an emphasis on the types of object that might be used. The principles are underpinned by the concepts from the theories of learning and presented in a manner that aims to be understandable by, and accessible to, designers

PERCEIVED SIMILARITY BETWEEN COMPLEX SOUNDS: THE CONTRIBUTION OF ACOUSTIC, DESCRIPTIVE AND CATEGORICAL FEATURES

The thesis identifies some of the most salient acoustic and descriptive features employed in listeners' representations of sounds focussing on similarity judgements. A range of descriptive data (including word pair and imagery/word use) was collected alongside acoustic measures for the sound stimuli employed. The sounds employed were initially all abstract in nature but environmental sounds were included in later experiments. A painwise comparison task and a grouping task were employed to collect (dis)similarity data for multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analyses. These provided visual output that represented the sounds' perceived similarities. Following participants' similarity judgements correlational techniques identified which of the acoustic and descriptive features helped to explain the dimensions identified by the MDS. Results across all nine experiments indicated that both acoustic and descriptive features contributed to listeners' similarity judgements and that the influence of these varied for the different sound sets employed. Familiarity with the sounds was identified as an additional feature that played a key role in the way participants used the available information in their grouping decisions. There was also a clear indication that the category to which a sounds source object belonged was making an important contribution to the similarity judgements for sounds rated as familiar. The work highlights a complex and variable relationship in the use of descriptive and acoustic features. Further the work has investigated the similarities and differences in participants' judgements depending on the data collection technique used i.e. pairwise comparison or grouping task. These findings have implications for the development of future models of auditory cognition. The thesis suggests that the perception of sound with particular reference to similarity is a complex interplay of features that goes far beyond understanding acoustic features alone.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Counci

Collaborating through sounds: audio-only interaction with diagrams

PhDThe widening spectrum of interaction contexts and users’ needs continues to expose the limitations of the Graphical User Interface. But despite the benefits of sound in everyday activities and considerable progress in Auditory Display research, audio remains under-explored in Human- Computer Interaction (HCI). This thesis seeks to contribute to unveiling the potential of using audio in HCI by building on and extending current research on how we interact with and through the auditory modality. Its central premise is that audio, by itself, can effectively support collaborative interaction with diagrammatically represented information. Before exploring audio-only collaborative interaction, two preliminary questions are raised; first, how to translate a given diagram to an alternative form that can be accessed in audio; and second, how to support audio-only interaction with diagrams through the resulting form. An analysis of diagrams that emphasises their properties as external representations is used to address the first question. This analysis informs the design of a multiple perspective hierarchybased model that captures modality-independent features of a diagram when translating it into an audio accessible form. Two user studies then address the second question by examining the feasibility of the developed model to support the activities of inspecting, constructing and editing diagrams in audio. The developed model is then deployed in a collaborative lab-based context. A third study explores audio-only collaboration by examining pairs of participants who use audio as the sole means to communicate, access and edit shared diagrams. The channels through which audio is delivered to the workspace are controlled, and the effect on the dynamics of the collaborations is investigated. Results show that pairs of participants are able to collaboratively construct diagrams through sounds. Additionally, the presence or absence of audio in the workspace, and the way in which collaborators chose to work with audio were found to impact patterns of collaborative organisation, awareness of contribution to shared tasks and exchange of workspace awareness information. This work contributes to the areas of Auditory Display and HCI by providing empirically grounded evidence of how the auditory modality can be used to support individual and collaborative interaction with diagrams.Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. (MERS

Auditory Display Design : An Investigation of a Design Pattern Approach

PhDThis thesis investigates the design of audio for feedback in human-technology interaction— auditory displays. Despite promising progress in research and the potential benefits, we currently see little impact of audio in everyday interfaces. Changing interaction paradigms, new contexts of use and inclusive design principles, however, increase the need for an efficient, non-visual means of conveying information. Motivated by these needs, this work describes the development and evaluation of a methodological design framework, aiming to enhance knowledge and skill transfer in auditory display design and to enable designers to build more efficient and compelling auditory solutions. The work starts by investigating the current practice in designing audio in the user interface. A survey amongst practitioners and researchers in the field and a literature study of research papers highlighted the need for a structured design approach. Building on these results, paco – pattern design in the context space has been developed, a framework providing methods to capture, apply and refine design knowledge through design patterns. A key element of paco, the context space, serves as the organising principle for patterns, artefacts and design problems and supports designers in conceptualising the design space. The evaluation of paco is the first comparative study of a design methodology in this area. Experts in auditory display design and novice designers participated in a series of experiments to determine the usefulness of the framework. The evaluation demonstrated that paco facilitates the transfer of design knowledge and skill between experts and novices as well as promoting reflection and recording of design rationale. Alongside these principle achievements, important insights have been gained about the design process which lay the foundations for future research into this subject area. This work contributes to the field of auditory display as it reflects on the current practice and proposes a means of supporting designers to communicate, reason about and build on each other’s work more efficiently. The broader field of human-computer interaction may also benefit from the availability of design guidance for exploiting the auditory modality to answer the challenges of future interaction design. Finally, with paco a generic methodology in the field of design patterns was proposed, potentially similarly beneficial to other designing disciplines