The influence of age and gender in the interaction with touch screens

Touch screens are nowadays one of the major interfaces in the interaction between humans and technology, mostly due to the significant growth in the use of smartphones and tablets in the last years. This broad use, that reaches people from all strata of society, makes touch screens a relevant tool to study the mechanisms that influence the way we interact with electronic devices. In this paper we collect data regarding the interaction patterns of different users with mobile devices. We present a way to formalize these interaction patterns and analyze how aspects such as age and gender influence them. The results of this research may be relevant for developing mobile applications that identify and adapt to the users or their characteristics, including impairments in fine motor skills or in cognitive function.Fundos Europeus Estruturais e de Investimento (FEEI) through Programa Operacional Regional Norte, in the scope of project NORTE01-0145-FEDER-02357

From Linearity to Circulation. How TV Flow Is Changing in Networked Media Space

This article discusses the evolution of the concept of flow from the producer-controlled phase to the user-controlled phase, thus proposing the concept of circulation as a new framework for understanding the new TV ecosystem. The multiplication of screens (from the traditional TV set to handheld mobile devices) has made TV content accessible anytime and anywhere and, furthermore, has provided an interactive space where the digital life of content is managed by the audiences on social media. Such multiplication of screens has created forms of TV consumption that lead to the deconstruction and subsequent reformulation of the concepts of space, time and medium. This article examines this ongoing process, beginning with observations of audience consumption practices that are analysed using Osservatorio Social TV 2015, an Italian research project

Biometria Comportamental em Dispositivos Móveis

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia InformáticaCom o avanço da tecnologia, os dispositivos móveis de ecrã tátil tornaram-se uma das principais interfaces de interação entre humanos e tecnologia. A sua utilização abrange todos os estratos da sociedade, o que faz com que os ecrãs táteis sejam um instrumento relevante para estudar os mecanismos que influenciam a nossa forma de interagir com dispositivos móveis. Esta interação associada à utilização massiva destes dispositivos, permite a recolha de uma grande variedade de dados de interação dos utilizadores. Esta dissertação apresenta uma abordagem para formalizar padrões de interação baseados em dados biométricos comportamentais, que são recolhidos através dos ecrãs táteis, e permitem estudar diferentes fatores humanos. São apresentados dois casos de estudo em que esta abordagem foi aplicada, demonstrando a sua elevada versatilidade. O primeiro caso de estudo está relacionado com a estimulação da memória e como a idade e género influenciam a forma de interagir com dispositivos móveis. Este estudo é relevante na medida em que pode permitir o desenvolvimento de aplicações móveis que se adaptam aos utilizadores e às suas características. O segundo caso de estudo está relacionado com a autenticação contínua, sendo propostas duas abordagens diferentes para criar um sistema de autenticação que valida a identidade do utilizador. Este sistema irá permitir aumentar a segurança e a eficácia da autenticação, através da garantia de que as aplicações do smartphone só são acedidas por quem tem autorização para tal.With the advancement of technology, the touch screens of mobile devices have become one of the main interfaces for human-technology interaction. Its use covers all strata of society, making touch screens an important tool for studying the mechanisms that influence the way we interact with mobile devices. This interaction, associated with the massive use of these devices, allows the collection of a wide variety of biometric data. This dissertation presents a strategy to formalize patterns of interaction based on biometric data, which are collected through touch screens. Two case studies in which this approach is used are presented, demonstrating its high versatility. The first case study is related to memory stimulation and how age and gender influence the way we interact with mobile devices. This study is relevant as the development of mobile applications that adapt to users and their characteristics is becoming increasingly important. The second case study is related to continuous authentication, and two different approaches are proposed to create an authentication system that validates the identity of the user. This will increase the security and effectiveness of authentication by ensuring that mobile phone applications are only accessed by those authorized to do so

Taking Afrobarometer Data Everywhere

According to statistics gathered by research group Afrobarometer, many countries in Africa lack infrastructure and basic necessities. In fact, Afrobarometer knows the specific rates of need and availability sampled across thirty-six countries but more prosperous African countries do not know these numbers. These more developed countries are in a position to help their less fortunate neighbors if only made aware of the social and economic climate in the respective areas. Our partnership with Afrobarometer will allow us to advertise these statistics through the use of a mobile application. The data will be displayed in a way that is easy for the average reader to digest and understand. By exposing a larger African audience to the results from these public opinion surveys, Afrobarometer hopes to inspire these people to take action and make donations to the appropriate social benefit groups. The countries represented by the surveys can then receive help in the areas expressing need

An Ergonomics Analysis of Redundancy Effect in Touch Screen Design for the Aged Population

Touch screen technology is rapidly increasing, and at the same time there is a shifting, aging population. As the percentage of the population over the age of 65 increases, adults of the age group are adopting smartphones and tablets more now than ever before. Although older adults are adopting touch screen devices, they face many challenges when interacting with said devices, such as not knowing how to navigate between pages, not knowing where to click for an action to occur, and the touch screen interface is often too sensitive or the buttons are not big enough. Furthermore, the challenges of aging, specifically sensory and cognitive decline resulting from aging affect comprehension and spacial processing, which are critical when navigating through an interface. The purpose of this thesis was to better understand redundancy effect applied to females and males between the ages of 65 and 84. There were two tasks of different lengths, and for each task there were two designs. The first design included text only buttons, and the second included symbol + text buttons, the latter being the redundant interface. Quantitative results yielded no significant results for time for either task. Qualitative results included ratings for ease of navigation, general satisfaction, overall understanding, and button design preference. Preferences between text only buttons were statistically significant; for the task of online grocery shopping and booking a cruise, females prefer text only buttons and males prefer symbol + text buttons (p = 0.0068 and p = 0.0024). Although button design had no significance in completing a task, significant preference results indicate likelihood to return to a given website. Furthermore, although quantitative results were not significant, gender did influence average times per task and average ratings across categories. Further research could be conducted with larger sample sizes, other forms of redundancy, and larger tasks, however it is evident through this experiment that gender has an impact on how adults between 65 and 84 perceive and navigate through touch screen interfaces given the constraints of the symbols used, ages, and task designs. Therefore, concluding recommendations based on the qualitative data suggest that designers should create gender specific interfaces based on gender favored websites, or design based on the ability to customize the interface upon entering a website

Usability of the Stylus Pen in Mobile Electronic Documentation

Stylus pens are often used with mobile information devices. However, few studies have examined the stylus’ simple movements because the technical expertise to support documentation with stylus pens has not been developed. This study examined the usability of stylus pens in authentic documentation tasks, including three main tasks (sentence, table, and paragraph making) with two types of styluses (touchsmart stylus and mobile stylus) and a traditional pen. The statistical results showed that participants preferred the traditional pen in all criteria. Because of inconvenient hand movements, the mobile stylus was the least preferred on every task. Mobility does not provide any advantage in using the stylus. In addition, the study also found inconvenient hand support using a stylus and different feedback between a stylus and a traditional pen.This study was supported by the Dongguk University Research Fund of 2015. Support for the University Jaume-I (UJI) Robotic Intelligence Laboratory is provided in part by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (DPI2011-27846), by Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEOII/2014/028) and by Universitat Jaume I (P1-1B2014-52)

Foucault, exhibitionism and voyeurism on chatroulette

Sexuality, understood as a Foucauldian discourse that expresses itself through our passions and pursuits and contributes massively to our socially- constructed identity formation, has from the outset been a major factor in the growth of the internet. As the ultimate look-but-don‘t-touch medium, the computer screen has offered us a pornographic emporium in the privacy of our homes, fed first by the producers of material in the standard broadcast mode, then more and more by ourselves, to each other, in the social media context of online sexual social networking. The recent shift of sexual video material from broadcast to social media mode highlights the fundamental exhibitionism/voyeurism dyad at the core of all this activity, and finds its most impersonal, anonymous apotheosis in the phenomenon that is ChatRoulette, where visual discourse-objects are deployed in a nexus of online sexual power relations

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones