Understanding and improving mobile reading via scalable and low cost sensing

In recent years, due to the increasing ubiquity of Internet and mobile devices, mobile reading on smart watches and smartphones is experiencing rapid growth. Despite the great potential, new challenges are brought. Compared to traditional reading, mobile reading faces major challenges such as encountering more frequent distractions and lacking portable and efficient technique to deeply understand and improve it. Fortunately, the development of the hardware and software of mobile devices provide an opportunity to track users’ behavior and physiological signals accurately in a low-cost and portable manner. In this thesis, I explored the usage of low-cost mobile sensors to solve the measurement challenges of reading. I used the low-cost mobile sensing techniques on mobile devices to understand and improve the degree and quality of reading. In this thesis, I first present SmartRSVP, a reading interface on smart watches that leverages eye-gaze contact tracking technique and heart rate sensing technique to facilitate reading under distractions. I then present Lepton, an intelligent reading system on smart phones that tracks eye-gaze periodical patterns and sensing the screen touching behavior to monitor readers’ cognitions and emotions during reading. Lastly, I present StrategicReading, which uses the implicitly captured eye gaze patterns, scrolling motions, and log histories to monitor users’ reading strategies and performance during multiple-sources online reading

Mobile advertising effectiveness versus PC and TV using consumer neuroscience

This Doctoral Thesis, entitled Mobile Advertising Effectiveness versus PC and TV, Using Consumer Neuroscience, while analyzes both the evolution of mobile advertising and its current situation, also discusses, how effective is mobile advertising when compared against advertising in other digital devices, such as PC and TV. The last few years have been characterized by an increase of the time that consumers spend on their mobile phones and as a result, by an increase in the expending on digital mobile advertising. Brands are already demanding models that measure digital advertising effectiveness, and consumer neuroscience technology may help, not only to measure it, but also to understand its impact on consumers. Considering this environment, this research proposes various recommendations for advertisers that may be considering using consumer neuroscience technology to measure mobile advertising effectiveness, as well as recommendations on how to design mobile ads that increase advertising effectiveness

Improving and Scaling Mobile Learning via Emotion and Cognitive-state Aware Interfaces

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide high-quality learning materials at low cost to millions of learners. Current MOOC designs, however, have minimal learner-instructor communication channels. This limitation restricts MOOCs from addressing major challenges: low retention rates, frequent distractions, and little personalization in instruction. Previous work enriched learner-instructor communication with physiological signals but was not scalable because of the additional hardware requirement. Large MOOC providers, such as Coursera, have released mobile apps providing more flexibility with “on-the-go” learning environments. This thesis reports an iterative process for the design of mobile intelligent interfaces that can run on unmodified smartphones, implicitly sense multiple modalities from learners, infer learner emotions and cognitive states, and intervene to provide gains in learning. The first part of this research explores the usage of photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals collected implicitly on the back-camera of unmodified smartphones. I explore different deep neural networks, DeepHeart, to improve the accuracy (+2.2%) and robustness of heart rate sensing from noisy PPG signals. The second project, AttentiveLearner, infers mind-wandering events via the collected PPG signals at a performance comparable to systems relying on dedicated physiological sensors (Kappa = 0.22). By leveraging the fine-grained cognitive states, the third project, AttentiveReview, achieves significant (+17.4%) learning gains by providing personalized interventions based on learners’ perceived difficulty. The latter part of this research adds real-time facial analysis from the front camera in addition to the PPG sensing from the back camera. AttentiveLearner2 achieves more robust emotion inference (average accuracy = 84.4%) in mobile MOOC learning. According to a longitudinal study with 28 subjects for three weeks, AttentiveReview2, with the multimodal sensing component, improves learning gain by 28.0% with high usability ratings (average System Usability Scale = 80.5). Finally, I show that technologies in this dissertation not only benefit MOOC learning, but also other emerging areas such as computational advertising and behavior targeting. AttentiveVideo, building on top of the sensing architecture in AttentiveLearner2, quantifies emotional responses to mobile video advertisements. In a 24-participant study, AttentiveVideo achieved good accuracy on a wide range of emotional measures (best accuracy = 82.6% across 9 measures)

CSR communication or branding strategy? Measuring the impact of CSR versus non-CSR communication on FMCG consumers in Egypt: the Theory of Reasoned Action and message-consumer congruence.

Considering changes in consumer behaviour and the emergence of new media, this thesis contributes to literature on CSR communication by comparing the effectiveness of CSR communication to non-CSR communication in Egypt among FMCG consumers. Whilst multitude of studies focused on various aspects of CSR communication in Western markets, their generalizability to markets of different sociocultural characteristics cannot be guaranteed. Coupled with the evolving nature of the sociocultural and consumption environment, the need for differentiated replications is addressed in this study. Therefore, this thesis addresses this gap and is one of the first studies that examines, in a mixed-methods design, the impact of CSR and non-CSR communication on consumers’ brand attitudes and purchase intentions in Egypt. Theoretically, this study integrates multiple theories to propose a novel and comprehensive conceptual framework from which theoretical contributions have emerged. Specifically, drawing on the Theory of Reasoned Action, the Stimuli-Organism-Response framework, and the concept of value congruence, this research explores the impact of CSR communication strategies on brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Therefore, the study contributes new knowledge on CSR brand communication effectiveness in an under-researched socio-cultural context in order to establish its applicability and effectiveness in a new market. This study employed mixed research methods by conducting 2x2 factorial survey experiments to compare the effects of CSR to non-CSR communication and to examine the role of message-respondent congruence. The final data set included responses from 474 respondents. Following that, semi-structured interviews were conducted on a smaller sample to gain deeper insights on respondents’ perceptions of CSR communication. Applying independent sample t-test, the comparisons between the groups revealed that all averages of the brand attitudes were significantly higher for consumers who were subjected to the CSR message. Based on structural equation modelling, there were direct positive effects of CSR communication on ad likeability, emotional brand attachment, brand trust and purchase intentions. Also, the qualitative data revealed a plethora of strategic suggestions for CSR communication. The theoretical application in this study revealed that this study’s theoretical contribution asserts that for TRA to be applicable to different product types, attitudes towards the brand is necessary to measure. The study provided further evidence to attest to the fact that the concepts of attitude towards brand and attitude towards ad are important variables which influence intention to buy the advertised product confirming TRA assumptions in case of CSR communication. Furthermore, the findings direct researchers to be aware that when applying TRA and SOR, some attitudes might have stronger effects on purchase intentions than others. Practically, this study offers a number of implications. First, it confirmed that CRS communication appeal is more effective than non-CSR communication appeal in Egypt for a specific brand and hence brand managers can be confident that CSR appeals are more likely to lead to more positive brand and ad attitudes which in turn influence buying intentions. Lastly, this study has some confounding variables such as prior consumer perception of the brand and price perception as they were not measured. Some questions related to other potential confounding variables were included to statistically control post data collection. Moreover, the cultural context of the study is specific to Egypt; hence, these experiments ought to be subjected to further differentiated replications in other countries to compare results between different cultures