Exploring the user experience through collage

We explore the use of collage in requirements elicitation, as a tool to support potential end-users in expressing their impressions, understanding, and emotions regarding a system

Merging Special Collections with GIS Technology to Enhance the User Experience

This analysis evaluates how PhillyHistory.org merged their unique special collection materials with geospatial-based progressive technology to challenge and educate the global community. A new generation of technologically savvy researchers has emerged that expect a more enhanced user experience than earlier generations. To meet these needs, collection managers are collaborating with community and local institutions to increase online access to materials; mixing best metadata practices with custom elements to create map mashups; and merging progressive GIS technology and geospatial based applications with their collections to enhance the user experience. The PhillyHistory.org website was analyzed to explore how they used various geospatial technology to create a new type of digital content management system based on geographical information and make their collections accessible via online software and mobile applications

PENGALAMAN PENGGUNA DALAM RANCANGAN APLIKASI PEMESANAN TIKET KERETA API MYTRAIN MENGGUNAKAN PENDEKATAN METODE UX JOURNEY

Problem: User experience (UX) has become a major focus in modern application design. In the context of ordering train tickets, the My Train application has implemented the UX Journey method approach to improve the quality of services provided to users. This research aims to explore the user experience in using the My Train application and evaluate the effectiveness of the UX Journey approach in improving the user experience. The discussion of the problem is how implementing UX Journey affects the user experience in the My Train application. The research method used is a qualitative approach with data collection through in-depth interviews with users who have used the My Train application. Method: In this method, researchers explore users' views and experiences in interacting with the application. We also seek a deep understanding of the challenges they face and the extent to which the UX Journey approach has provided solutions. Results: The research results show that applying the UX Journey approach to the My Train application has had a positive impact on the user experience. Users reported significant improvements in terms of easier navigation, clearer information, and a more efficient ordering process. Although there were several challenges, such as understanding new features and system response speed, improvements made based on user feedback have provided a satisfactory solution. Conclusion and development: It is hoped that the UX Journey approach can effectively improve the user experience in the My Train application. This provides valuable insights for the development of better services and can be adopted by similar applications in an effort to improve user experience. Furthermore, this research also opens up the potential for further development in the context of the UX Journey which can be applied in various industries and applications

The user experience of crowds

This thesis is concerned with the user experience of crowds, incorporating issues of comfort, satisfaction, safety and performance within a given crowd situation. Factors that influence the organisation and monitoring of crowd events will be considered. A comprehensive review of the literature revealed that crowd safety, pedestrian flow modeling, public order policing and hooliganism prevention, has received the greatest attention with previous research on crowds. Whereas crowd performance, comfort and satisfaction has received less attention, particularly within spectator events (sporting and music for example). Original research undertaken for this doctoral thesis involved a series of studies: user focus groups, stakeholder interviews, and observational research within event security and organisation. Following on from these investigations, the findings have been integrated with a tool to assist crowd organisers and deliverers during the planning of crowd events, and accompanying user feedback interviews following use of the tool. The overarching aim of the research within this thesis was to explore the complex issues that contribute to the user experience of being in a crowd, and how this might be improved. The crowd user focus groups revealed differences in factors affecting crowd satisfaction, varying according to age and user expectations. Greater differences existed between crowd users, than across crowd situations, highlighting the importance of identifying expected crowd members when planning individual events. Additionally, venue design, organisation, safety and security concerns were found to highly affect crowd satisfaction, irrespective of group differences or crowd situations, showing the importance of these issues when considering crowd satisfaction for all crowd events, for any crowd members. Stakeholder interviews examining crowds from another perspective suggested that overall safety was a high priority due to legal obligations, in order to protect venue reputation. Whereas, comfort and satisfaction received less attention within the organisation of crowd events due to budget considerations, and a lack of concern as to the importance of such issues. Moreover, communication and management systems were sometimes inadequate to ensure compliance with internal procedures. In addition a lack of usable guidance was seen to be available to those responsible for organising crowd situations. Eleven themes were summarised from the data, placed in order of frequency of references to the issues: health and safety, public order, communication, physical environment, public relations, crowd movement, event capacity, facilities, satisfaction, comfort, and crowd characteristics. Results were in line with the weighting of the issues within the literature, with health and safety receiving the most attention, and comfort and satisfaction less attention. These results were used to form the basis of observational checklists for event observations across various crowd situations. Event observations took two forms: observing the role of public and private security, and observing crowd events from the user perspective. Observations within public and private security identified seven general themes: communication, anticipating crowd reaction, information, storage, training, role confusion, financial considerations and professionalism. Findings questioned the clarity of the differing roles of public and private security, and understanding of these differences. Also the increasing use of private over public security within crowd event security, and the differing levels of training and experience within public and private security were identified. Event observations identified fifteen common themes drawn from the data analysis: communication, public order, comfort, facilities, queuing systems, transportation, crowd movement, design, satisfaction, health and safety, public relations, event capacity, time constraints, encumbrances, and cultural differences. Key issues included the layout of the event venue together with the movement and monitoring of crowd users, as well as the availability of facilities in order to reduce competition between crowd users, together with possible links to maintaining public order and reducing anti-social behaviour during crowd events. Findings from the focus groups, interviews, and observations were then combined (to enhance the robustness of the findings), and developed into the Crowd Satisfaction Assessment Tool (CSAT) prototype, a practical tool for event organisers to use during the planning of crowd events. In order to assess proof of concept of the CSAT, potential users (event organisers) were recruited to use the CSAT during the planning of an event they were involved in organising. Semi-structured feedback interviews were then undertaken, to gain insight into the content, usefulness, and usability of the CSAT. Separately human factors researchers were recruited to review the CSAT, providing feedback on the layout and usability of the tool. Feedback interviews suggested the CSAT was a useful concept, aiding communication, and providing organisers with a systematic and methodical structure for planning ahead, prioritising ideas, and highlighting areas of concern. The CSAT was described as being clear and easy to follow, with clear aims, and clear instructions for completion, and was felt to aid communication between the various stakeholders involved in the organisation and management of an event, allowing information to be recorded, stored and shared between stakeholders, with the aim of preventing the loss of crucial information. The thesis concludes with a summary model of the factors that influence crowd satisfaction within crowd events of various descriptions. Key elements of this are the anticipation, facilities, and planning considered before an event, influences and monitoring during an event and reflection after an event. The relevance and impact of this research is to assist the planning of crowd events, with the overall aim of improving participant satisfaction during crowd events. From a business perspective the issue is important with competition between events, the desire to encourage return to events, and to increase profit for organisers. From an ergonomics perspective, there is the imperative of improving the performance of crowd organisers and the experience of crowd users

The joy of vacuuming? How the user experience affects vacuum cleaner longevity

An apparent reduction in the average lifetime of vacuum cleaners is explored in this paper in relation to their perceived usability and increasingly frequent product replacement. Motivations for product disposal combine perceived and real product failure with a perceived or real improved product offer. From an historical perspective, vacuum cleaners typify this pattern, continually offering a ‘cheaper and improved’ product. Vacuum cleaner manufacturers reinvigorate the sense of satisfaction and revulsion associated with extracting dirt from our homes through new performance focused product development. For example, increased motor power, filtration, bag-less machines and clear bin compartments have all acted as sales drivers, whilst cost effective materials and offshore and more efficient manufacturing have reduced purchase prices. The latter, cost-driven, processes can create machines that are more likely to be functionally and aesthetically damaged in use, reinforcing the trend for faster replacement. The market appears likely to continue to focus on improved user experience, with growth in market share for lighter weight cordless battery powered machines posing the risk of an increased environmental burden. Drawing from qualitative and quantitative research undertaken for a study for Defra, we explore the user’s relationship to the product, investigating the frustrations and joys of vacuum cleaner use and ownership. The findings illustrate that the revulsion and attraction of cleaning, as well as the tedium and satisfaction fostered by the product, have direct implications for vacuum cleaner longevity

Factors Influencing the Quality of the User Experience in Ubiquitous Recommender Systems

The use of mobile devices and the rapid growth of the internet and networking infrastructure has brought the necessity of using Ubiquitous recommender systems. However in mobile devices there are different factors that need to be considered in order to get more useful recommendations and increase the quality of the user experience. This paper gives an overview of the factors related to the quality and proposes a new hybrid recommendation model.Comment: The final publication is available at www.springerlink.com Distributed, Ambient, and Pervasive Interactions Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 8530, 2014, pp 369-37

Sensitive and Scalable Online Evaluation with Theoretical Guarantees

Multileaved comparison methods generalize interleaved comparison methods to provide a scalable approach for comparing ranking systems based on regular user interactions. Such methods enable the increasingly rapid research and development of search engines. However, existing multileaved comparison methods that provide reliable outcomes do so by degrading the user experience during evaluation. Conversely, current multileaved comparison methods that maintain the user experience cannot guarantee correctness. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we propose a theoretical framework for systematically comparing multileaved comparison methods using the notions of considerateness, which concerns maintaining the user experience, and fidelity, which concerns reliable correct outcomes. Second, we introduce a novel multileaved comparison method, Pairwise Preference Multileaving (PPM), that performs comparisons based on document-pair preferences, and prove that it is considerate and has fidelity. We show empirically that, compared to previous multileaved comparison methods, PPM is more sensitive to user preferences and scalable with the number of rankers being compared.Comment: CIKM 2017, Proceedings of the 2017 ACM on Conference on Information and Knowledge Managemen

Visual aesthetics and the user experience

User experience is conceptualized as a phenomenon consisting of instrumental and non-instrumental quality perceptions as well as emotional user reactions. Visual aesthetics is defined as one non-instrumental quality and available methods are applied to measure the perception of visual aesthetics of interactive systems. Selected results of two studies are reported that addressed the influence of perceived usability and visual aesthetics on emotional user reactions and consequences of user experience and studied the effect of user characteristics and contextual parameters on these relations. The results show that usability and visual aesthetics can be perceived independently. Furthermore, the relevance of perceived visual aesthetics for emotional user reactions and consequences of user experience is demonstrated. However, the results reveal that the importance depends on user characteristics, e.g. the centrality of visual product aesthetics, and context parameters, e.g. the goaldirectedness of the interaction