Human Factors As A Parameter For Improving Interface Usability And User Satisfaction

The endeavour to optimize HCI should integrate a wide array of user characteristics that have an effect throughout users’ interactions with a system. Human factors such as cognitive traits and current state, from a psychological point of view, are undoubtedly significant in the shaping of the perceived and objective quality of interactions with a system. The research that is presented in this paper focuses on identifying human factors that relate to users’ performance in Web applications that involve information processing, and a framework of personalization rules that are expected to increase users’ performance is depicted. The empirical results that are presented are derived from environments both learning and commercial; in the case of e-learning personalization was beneficial, while the interaction with a commercial site needs to be further investigated due to the implicit character of information processing in the Web

RFID-Integrated Retail Supply Chain Services: Lessons Learnt From The Smart Project

This paper proposes a service-oriented architecture that utilizes the automatic, unique identification capabilities of RFID technology, data stream management systems and web services, to support RFID-integrated supply chain services. In the lifespan of SMART project (IST-2005, FP6) two services have been deployed supporting dynamic-pricing of fresh products and management of promotion events. The two services have been field-tested in three retail stores in Greece, Ireland, and Cyprus. The valuable lessons learnt, concerning RFID readability challenges, consumer privacy, customers and store staff health concerns, investment cost, and so on, are reported to provide guidance to future developers of RFID-integrated supply chain services as well as to set an agenda for academic research

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

The Role of Emotions in the Design of Personalized Educational Systems

Research on modelling affect and on interfaces adaptation based on affective factors has matured considerably over the past several years, so that designers of educational products are now considering the inclusion of components that take affect into account. Emotions are considered to play a central role in guiding and regulating behaviour by modulating numerous cognitive and physiological activities. This paper1 introduces a new model in the field of adaptive hypermedia, which integrates cognitive and emotional parameters and attempts to apply them on a web-based learning environment. Our purpose is to improve learning performance and, most importantly, to personalize web-content to users’ needs and preferences, eradicating known difficulties that occur in traditional approaches. The specific article emphasizes on the emotional aspect of our model, since it presents results of our efforts to measure and include emotional processing parameters, by constructing a theory that addresses emotion and is feasible in Web-learning environments

The role of emotions in the design of personalized educational systems

Research on modelling affect and on interfaces adaptation based on affective factors has matured considerably over the past several years, so that designers of educational products are now considering the inclusion of components that take affect into account. Emotions are considered to play a central role in guiding and regulating behaviour by modulating numerous cognitive and physiological activities. This papers introduces a new model in the field of adaptive hypermedia, which integrates cognitive and emotional parameters and attempts to apply them on a web-based learning environment. Our purpose is to improve learning performance and most importantly, to personalize web-content to users’ needs and preferences, eradicating known difficulties that occur in traditional approaches. The specific article emphasizes on the emotional aspect of our model, since it presents results of our efforts to measure and include emotional processing parameters, by constructing a theory that addresses emotion and is feasible in Web-learning environments