Modeling Expertise in Assistive Navigation Interfaces for Blind People

Evaluating the impact of expertise and route knowledge on task performance can guide the design of intelligent and adaptive navigation interfaces. Expertise has been relatively unexplored in the context of assistive indoor navigation interfaces for blind people. To quantify the complex relationship between the user's walking patterns, route learning, and adaptation to the interface, we conducted a study with 8 blind participants. The participants repeated a set of navigation tasks while using a smartphone-based turn-by-turn navigation guidance app. The results demonstrate the gradual evolution of user skill and knowledge throughout the route repetitions, significantly impacting the task completion time. In addition to the exploratory analysis, we take a step towards tailoring the navigation interface to the user's needs by proposing a personalized recurrent neural net work-based behavior model for expertise level classification

What\u27s the Beef with Veg*ns: A Mixed Method Approach To Anti-Veg*n Stigma

Despite veg*n scholarship within psychological science, much of this research examined anti-veg*n attitudes amongst non-veg*ns complemented with scarce research on the impact of anti-veg*n stigma and experiences of veg*ns. Underpinned by critical feminist framework with a phenomenological approach, the present study, a convergent mixed method design, examined the relationship between anti-veg*n stigma and multicultural awareness among 165 non-veg*ns and explored the experiences of 13 veg*ns in the context of stigma. Path analysis revealed that multicultural awareness and attitudes towards those with different dietary habits (e.g., veg*n diets, p. 19) was negatively associated with attitudes towards vegans. Additionally, path analysis revealed that attitudes towards vegetarians were negatively associated with attitudes towards different dietary habits and not with multicultural awareness and attitudes. Qualitative analysis revealed 5 salient themes: 1) The Veg*n Experience, 2) Contextual Concealment and Outness, 3) Anti-Veg*n Messages and Discrimination, 4) Navigation Strategies, and 5) Centrality of Nonhuman Consumption and Related-Inequalities. These themes characterized participants’ experience, perceptions, and navigation of anti-veg*n stigma at all levels of society as well as perceived benefits and costs related to veg*n identification. Integration of qualitative and quantitative revealed differences in perceptions of anti-veg*n attitudes towards veg*ns. Implications for clinical practice, training, and policy development are discussed

Secure webs and buying intention: the moderating role of usability

El presente trabajo ha planteado un modelo conceptual a fin de mostrar como los antecedentes de la intención de compra se ven reforzados en contextos de Webs altamente usables. Específicamente, el trabajo analiza en profundidad el rol moderador de la usabilidad en la explicación de la conexión entre seguridad de una Web e intención de compra. Entre ambos extremos (seguridad e intención de compra), se han incluido diversas variables para explicar mejor su conexión. Para ello, ha sido diseñada una Web ficticia de ropa dirigida al segmento joven de clase media. A fin de alterar la usabilidad de la Web se han realizado dos tipos de manipulaciones: la velocidad y la facilidad de uso de la Web. Las dos Webs creadas (alta usabilidad y baja usabilidad) fueron visitadas por un total de 170 encuestados que fueron compensados con un USB valorado en 15 euros. Los resultados muestran que la seguridad percibida en la Web acarrea tres interesantes efectos (especialmente para la Web altamente usable): (i) mejora las actitudes agrado, (ii) reduce el nivel de riesgo percibido; (iii) aumenta la confianza. Los dos últimos efectos, a su vez, acaban aumentando la intención de compra.. Por último, se ha demostrado que la usabilidad, efectivamente, refuerza las relaciones consideradas en el modelo propuesto para explicar la intención de compra.A conceptual model has been proposed to show how buying intention antecedents are reinforced in highly usable contexts. Specifically, this paper deeply analyses the moderator role of system variables (usability) on explaining the relationship between Web security and buying intention. Between both extremes (security and buying intention), several relationships have also been stated to better explain this effect. An “ideal” fictitious Website was designed for a non existent clothing company directed at the segment of middle class consumers. In order to alter Web usability, two blocks of changes were made, one concerning Website speed and the other related to ease of use. Our experiment sample consisted of 170 respondents who participated in exchange for a pen-drive (USB) valued at 15 euros. The results show that improving website security has three interesting effects (especially in high usable contexts): (i) it improves pleasure attitudes, (ii) reduces the level of perceived risk and (iii) increases trust. Secondly, it has been found that to increase buying intention, two actions must be taken: (i) to diminish perceived risk and (ii) to improve users’ pleasure attitudes towards the Website. Finally, usability has been found to have a moderating role in all the relationships considered (reinforcing them)

Energy Efficiency in the ICT - Profiling Power Consumption in Desktop Computer Systems

Energy awareness in the ICT has become an important issue. Focusing on software, recent work suggested the existence of a relationship between power consumption, software configuration and usage patterns in computer systems. The aim of this work was collecting and analysing power consumption data of general-purpose computer systems, simulating common usage scenarios, in order to extract a power consumption profile for each scenario. We selected two desktop systems of different generations as test machines. Meanwhile, we developed 11 usage scenarios, and conducted several test runs of them, collecting power consumption data by means of a power meter. Our analysis resulted in an estimation of a power consumption value for each scenario and software application used, obtaining that each single scenario introduced an overhead from 2 to 11 Watts, which corresponds to a percentage increase that can reach up to 20% on recent and more powerful systems. We determined that software and its usage patterns impact consistently on the power consumption of computer systems. Further work will be devoted to evaluate how power consumption is affected by the usage of specific system resource

e-Consumer Behaviour

Purpose – The primary purpose of this article is to bring together apparently disparate and yet interconnected strands of research and present an integrated model of e-consumer behaviour. It has a secondary objective of stimulating more research in areas identified as still being underexplored. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is discursive, based on analysis and synthesis of econsumer literature. Findings – Despite a broad spectrum of disciplines that investigate e-consumer behaviour and despite this special issue in the area of marketing, there are still areas open for research into econsumer behaviour in marketing, for example the role of image, trust and e-interactivity. The paper develops a model to explain e-consumer behaviour. Research limitations/implications – As a conceptual paper, this study is limited to literature and prior empirical research. It offers the benefit of new research directions for e-retailers in understanding and satisfying e-consumers. The paper provides researchers with a proposed integrated model of e-consumer behaviour. Originality/value – The value of the paper lies in linking a significant body of literature within a unifying theoretical framework and the identification of under-researched areas of e-consumer behaviour in a marketing context

The development of path integration: combining estimations of distance and heading

Efficient daily navigation is underpinned by path integration, the mechanism by which we use self-movement information to update our position in space. This process is well-understood in adulthood, but there has been relatively little study of path integration in childhood, leading to an underrepresentation in accounts of navigational development. Previous research has shown that calculation of distance and heading both tend to be less accurate in children as they are in adults, although there have been no studies of the combined calculation of distance and heading that typifies naturalistic path integration. In the present study 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds took part in a triangle-completion task, where they were required to return to the startpoint of a multi-element path using only idiothetic information. Performance was compared to a sample of adult participants, who were found to be more accurate than children on measures of landing error, heading error, and distance error. 7-year-olds were significantly more accurate than 5-year-olds on measures of landing error and heading error, although the difference between groups was much smaller for distance error. All measures were reliably correlated with age, demonstrating a clear development of path integration abilities within the age range tested. Taken together, these data make a strong case for the inclusion of path integration within developmental models of spatial navigational processing

Shortest path or anchor-based route choice: a large-scale empirical analysis of minicab routing in London

Understanding and modelling route choice behaviour is central to predicting the formation and propagation of urban road congestion. Yet within conventional literature disagreements persist around the nature of route choice behaviour, and how it should be modelled. In this paper, both the shortest path and anchor-based perspectives on route choice behaviour are explored through an empirical analysis of nearly 700,000 minicab routes across London, United Kingdom. In the first set of analyses, the degree of similarity between observed routes and possible shortest paths is established. Shortest paths demonstrate poor performance in predicting both observed route choice and characteristics. The second stage of analysis explores the influence of specific urban features, named anchors, in route choice. These analyses show that certain features attract more route choices than would be expected were individuals choosing route based on cost minimisation alone. Instead, the results indicate that major urban features form the basis of route choice planning – being selected disproportionately more often, and causing asymmetry in route choice volumes by direction of travel. At a finer scale, decisions made at minor road features are furthermore demonstrated to influence routing patterns. The results indicate a need to revisit the basis of how routes are modelled, shifting from the shortest path perspective to a mechanism structured around urban features. In concluding, the main trends are synthesised within an initial framework for route choice modelling, and presents potential extensions of this research

Video Game Navigation: A Classification System for Navigational Acts

Navigation in video games has been a vastly neglected topic in game studies. In this paper a classification system for navigational acts has been developed through theoretical work as well as the analysis of multiple games. The result is an exclusive five-step classification system. Moreover, the development showed that navigational acts are highly dependent on the environment in which they occur. The system is a first step towards a deeper understanding of how the player navigates the gameworld, instead of what she navigates

A study of navigation strategies in spatial-semantic visualizations

Visualisations of abstract data are believed to assist the searcher by providing an overview of the semantic structure of a document collection whereby semantically similar items tend to cluster in space. Cribbin and Chen (2001) found that similarity data represented using minimum spanning tree (MST) graphs provided greater levels of support to users when conducting a range of information seeking tasks, in comparison to simple scatter graphs. MST graphs emphasise the most salient relationships between nodes by means of connecting links. This paper is based on the premise that it is the provision of these links that facilitated search performance. Using a combination of visual observations and existing theory, hypotheses predicting navigational strategies afforded by the MST link structure are presented and tested. The utility, in terms of navigational efficiency and retrieval success, of these and other observed strategies is then examined

Is spatial intelligibility critical to the design of largescale virtual environments?

This paper discusses the concept of 'intelligibility', a concept usually attributed to the design of real-world environments and suggests how it might be applied to the construction of virtual environments. In order to illustrate this concept, a 3d, online, collaborative environment, AlphaWorld, is analyzed in a manner analogous to spatial analysis techniques applied to cities in the real world. The outcome of this form of spatial analysis is that AlphaWorld appears to be highly 'intelligible' at the small-scale, 'local neighborhood' level, and yet is completely 'unintelligible' at a global level. This paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of this finding to virtual environment design plus future research applications