17,884 research outputs found
Current Practices for Product Usability Testing in Web and Mobile Applications
Software usability testing is a key methodology that ensures applications are intuitive and easy to use for the target audience. Usability testing has direct benefits for companies as usability improvements often are fundamental to the success of a product. A standard usability test study includes the following five steps: obtain suitable participants, design test scripts, conduct usability sessions, interpret test outcomes, and produce recommendations. Due to the increasing importance for more usable applications, effective techniques to develop usable products, as well as technologies to improve usability testing, have been widely utilized. However, as companies are developing more cross-platform web and mobile apps, traditional single-platform usability testing has shortcomings with respect to ensuring a uniform user experience. In this report, a new strategy is proposed to promote a consistent user experience across all application versions and platforms. This method integrates the testing of different application versions, e.g., the website, mobile app, mobile website. Participants are recruited with a better-defined criterion according to their preferred devices. The usability session is conducted iteratively on several different devices, and the test results of individual application versions are compared on a per-device basis to improve the test outcomes. This strategy is expected to extend on current practices for usability testing by incorporating cross-platform consistency of software versions on most devices
The Effect of Security Education and Expertise on Security Assessments: the Case of Software Vulnerabilities
In spite of the growing importance of software security and the industry
demand for more cyber security expertise in the workforce, the effect of
security education and experience on the ability to assess complex software
security problems has only been recently investigated. As proxy for the full
range of software security skills, we considered the problem of assessing the
severity of software vulnerabilities by means of a structured analysis
methodology widely used in industry (i.e. the Common Vulnerability Scoring
System (\CVSS) v3), and designed a study to compare how accurately individuals
with background in information technology but different professional experience
and education in cyber security are able to assess the severity of software
vulnerabilities. Our results provide some structural insights into the complex
relationship between education or experience of assessors and the quality of
their assessments. In particular we find that individual characteristics matter
more than professional experience or formal education; apparently it is the
\emph{combination} of skills that one owns (including the actual knowledge of
the system under study), rather than the specialization or the years of
experience, to influence more the assessment quality. Similarly, we find that
the overall advantage given by professional expertise significantly depends on
the composition of the individual security skills as well as on the available
information.Comment: Presented at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security
(WEIS 2018), Innsbruck, Austria, June 201
Assessments of Information Systems at Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the Agri-food Sector
Integrated information systems under large-scale company
conditions have become widespread over the past decades. Information, data
management and systematic information produced from these data and
arranged according to needs, however, are required by not only large-scale
companies but small- and medium-sized enterprises as well in the agri-food
sector. The improvement of information and communication technologies
continuously influence the development of information systems, the
introduction of different solutions in architecture and the application of new
business models. Our research goals was to analyse the evolution of ERP
(Enterprise Resource Planning), functional analysing of SME’s (Small and
Medium-sized Enterprises) information systems and developing decision
support tools for selection, comparison of ERPs and economical evaluation of
ERP investment. This tools are partly developed and usable for SMEs in the
agri-food sector
Custom-designed motion-based games for older adults: a review of literature in human-computer interaction
Many older adults, particularly persons living in senior residences and care homes, lead sedentary lifestyles, which reduces their life expectancy. Motion-based video games encourage physical activity and might be an opportunity for these adults to remain active and engaged; however, research efforts in the field have frequently focused on younger audiences and little is known about the requirements and benefits of motion-based games for elderly players. In this paper, we present an overview of motion-based video games and other interactive technologies for older adults. First, we summarize existing approaches towards the definition of motion-based video games – often referred to as exergames – and suggest a categorization of motion-based applications into active video games, exergames, and augmented sports. Second, we use this scheme to classify case studies addressing design efforts particularly directed towards older adults. Third, we analyze these case studies with a focus on potential target audiences, benefits, challenges in their deployment, and future design opportunities to investigate whether motion-based video games can be applied to encourage physical activity among older adults. In this context, special attention is paid to evaluation routines and their implications regarding the deployment of such games in the daily lives of older adults. The results show that many case studies examine isolated aspects of motion-based game design for older adults, and despite the broad range of issues in motion-based interaction for older adults covered by the sum of all research projects, there appears to be a disconnect between laboratory-based research and the deployment of motion-based video games in the daily lives of senior citizens. Our literature review suggests that despite research results suggesting various benefits of motion-based play for older adults, most work in the field of game design for senior citizens has focused on the implementation of accessible user interfaces, and that little is known about the long-term deployment of video games for this audience, which is a crucial step if these games are to be implemented in activity programs of senior residences, care homes, or in therapy
- …