Multi-Device Design in Contexts of Interchange and Task Migration

Com a miniaturização dos componentes digitais e o vasto desenvolvimento tecnológico dos últimos anos, a sociedade tem presenciado a redefinição dos "computadores pessoais" pelo advento dos dispositivos móveis. Além da inovação, eles introduziram o desafio do design multi-dispositivo para as aplicações desktop. Enquanto algumas abordagens criaram interfaces móveis sem aproveitar qualquer modelo, outras buscaram adaptações automáticas visando reduzir a sobrecarga de designo Em ambas, o foco do design deixou de ser o usuário, tornando as interfaces tão diferentes ao ponto de comprometerem a usabilidade na realização de uma mesma tarefa em vários dispositivos. Esta tese afirma que não existe uma abordagem de design multi-dispositivo capaz de garantir boa usabilidade em todos os contextos porque o usuário pode escolher apenas uma forma de acesso à aplicação ou alternar seu uso por meio de vários dispositivos. No primeiro caso, o usuário aprende a usar a interface para realizar suas tarefas, sendo relevante uma abordagem que aproveite os recursos do dispositivo e trate suas limitações. No segundo, o usuário já conhece uma das interfaces, o que gera uma expectativa no uso das demais. Logo, é necessário combinar abordagens com objetivos diferentes para atender ao usuário de acordo com o seu contexto de uso. Neste sentido, propõe-se o design multi-dispositivo por meio da preservação de uma hierarquia de prioridades de consistência definida em três níveis. Enquanto os dois primeiros dão suporte à expectativa do usuário em contextos de uso alternado (propensos à execução de tarefas em dispositivos diferentes) e migração de tarefas (iniciando tarefas com um dispositivo e concluindo com outro), o terceiro nível garante a personalização das tarefas de maior interesse visando eficiência e satisfação de uso em um dispositivo específico. A avaliação desta metodologia foi feita por meio de um experimento com três interfaces de pocket PC construídas a partir de uma aplicação desktop do domínio de Educação a Distância: a primeira delas era uma réplica da original (Migração Direta), a segunda não mantinha consistência de layout e era baseada em um processo de design personalizado adequado ao dispositivo (Linear) e a terceira aplicava apenas os dois primeiros níveis da hierarquia de prioridades (Overview). Os resultados da avaliação subjetiva mostraram que a abordagem Overview foi capaz de manter o modelo mental do usuário com maior precisão por preservar os atributos de facilidade, eficiência e segurança de uso na interação inter-dispositivo. Além disso, os resultados medidos para a eficácia (exatidão das respostas) e eficiênciá (tempo médio de execução das tarefas) foram iguais ou melhores com essa abordagem. Por outro lado, os usuários revelaram uma preferência pela personalização de tarefas presente na abordagem Linear. Este resultado dá suporte à proposta desta tese, mostrando que a eficácia gerada pelos dois primeiros níveis da hierarquia de prioridades (percepção e execução das tarefas) deve ser combinada com o terceiro nível de personalização. Para isso, sugere-se a disponibilização de padrões de interface criados pelo designer para escolha do usuário durante a interação. Essa combinação deve garantir usabilidade no acesso a uma aplicação feito sempre por um mesmo dispositivo ou em contextos de uso alternado e migração de tarefasWith the miniaturization of digital components and the vast technological development of the past years, society has remarked the redefinition of "personal computers" by the advent of modern mobile devices. Besides the innovation, these handhelds also introduced the challenge to develop multi-device interfaces for today's desktop applications. While some created mobile interfaces from scratch to get the best from the devices, others looked for automatic adaptations to reduce the load imposed to the designeI. In both cases, the user wasn't the focus anymore, which resulted interfaces so different from each other to the point of compromising usability when peHorming one task on many devices. This thesis claims that there is no multi-device approach capable to provi de full usability in every context because the user may choose only one interface to access the application or interchange its use via many devices. In the first case, the user learns to perform tasks with the given device, which makes relevant an approach that takes advantage of its resources and solves its limitations. In the second, the user already knows one of the available interfaces, which generates an expectation for the others. Therefore, it is necessary to combine approaches with different goals and suit the user according to the appropriate context. In this sense, we propose multi-device design via maintenance of a consistency priorities hierarchy defined in three levels. The first two levels give support to the user's expectation in contexts of interchange (prone to task execution with different devices) and task migration (starting tasks with one device and finishing with other). On the other side, the third level provides task personalization according to the user's interest towards higher efficiency and satisfaction of use with a specific device. The evaluation of this methodology was conducted by an experiment with three pocket PC interfaces designed from an e-learning desktop application: the first interface was an exact replica of the original desktop version (Direct Migration), the second didn't maintain layout consistency and was based in a personalized design process adequate to the device (Linear) while the third applied only the first two levels of the consistency priorities hierarchy (Overview). The subjective evaluation results pointed the Overview approach as the best to maintain the user's mental model by preserving easiness, efficiency and safety of use on inter-device interaction. Additionally, both measured efficacy (task result accuracy) and efficiency (task execution mean time) were the same or even better with this approach. On the other hand, users revealed their preference for the task personalization present in the Linear approach. This result gives support to our proposal, corroborating that the efficacy generated by the first two levels of the consistency priorities hierarchy (task perception and execution) should be combined with the third level of personalization. This could be done by letting designers create interface patterns and make them available to users during interaction. Such combination should guarantee usability while constantly accessing one application through the same device or in contexts of alternated use and task migratio

La dinámica comercial de emprendimiento digital en el actual contexto de pandemia por covid-19. Emprendimiento, comercio digital, estrategias, Quick Mall, Merqueo

La presente investigación trata sobre la dinámica comercial de emprendimiento digital en el actual contexto de pandemia por Covid-19. Estudio de caso: Plataformas digitales colombianas (Quick Mall y Merqueo). Ésta cuenta con aspectos teóricos y conceptuales vinculados al comercio y emprendimiento digital principalmente. Donde se destacan las estrategias comerciales que han guiado a los comercios digitales en la actualidad. Metodológicamente se ciñe a los parámetros de la investigación cualitativa, haciendo uso de la observación documental y la entrevista no estructurada. Concluyendo que los emprendimientos analizados aplican estrategias comerciales de gran importancia para el aumento tanto de clientes como de ingresos, siendo además pertinentes en las condiciones en las que se encuentra la sociedad colombiana, devenida por la presencia del Covid-19. Lo que afianza a su vez los postulados de los autores Perdigón, Viltres y Madrigal (2018), consolidando así, la presencia de Quick Mall y Merqueo en el mercado digital, tanto nacional como internacional, erigiéndose como los mejores en sus modalidades de negocio.The investigation is about the commercial dynamic of the digital entrepeurneship in the context of Covid-19. Case of study: digitals platforms in Colombia (Quick Mall and Merqueo). This research has theoretical and conceptual aspects mainly related to the commercial and digital entrepeunership. In addition, it shows the commercial strategies that is guided the digital commerce in nowadays. Methodologically the investigation is qualitative, using the documental observation and the non-structure interview. Concluding that the analyzed entrepeurneship applied important commercial strategies in order to increase the incoming and costumers, in the context of the Covid-19 is very pertinent. According to Perdigón, Viltres and Madrigal (2018), Quick Mall and Merqueo consolidate their presence in the digital market both nationally and internationally, establishing themselves as the best in their business modalities

A generic approach to the evolution of interaction in ubiquitous systems

This dissertation addresses the challenge of the configuration of modern (ubiquitous, context-sensitive, mobile et al.) interactive systems where it is difficult or impossible to predict (i) the resources available for evolution, (ii) the criteria for judging the success of the evolution, and (iii) the degree to which human judgements must be involved in the evaluation process used to determine the configuration. In this thesis a conceptual model of interactive system configuration over time (known as interaction evolution) is presented which relies upon the follow steps; (i) identification of opportunities for change in a system, (ii) reflection on the available configuration alternatives, (iii) decision-making and (iv) implementation, and finally iteration of the process. This conceptual model underpins the development of a dynamic evolution environment based on a notion of configuration evaluation functions (hereafter referred to as evaluation functions) that provides greater flexibility than current solutions and, when supported by appropriate tools, can provide a richer set of evaluation techniques and features that are difficult or impossible to implement in current systems. Specifically this approach has support for changes to the approach, style or mode of use used for configuration - these features may result in more effective systems, less effort involved to configure them and a greater degree of control may be offered to the user. The contributions of this work include; (i) establishing the the need for configuration evolution through a literature review and a motivating case study experiment, (ii) development of a conceptual process model supporting interaction evolution, (iii) development of a model based on the notion of evaluation functions which is shown to support a wide range of interaction configuration approaches, (iv) a characterisation of the configuration evaluation space, followed by (v) an implementation of these ideas used in (vi) a series of longitudinal technology probes and investigations into the approaches

Internet on mobiles: evolution of usability and user experience

The mobile Internet is no longer a new phenomenon; the first mobile devices supporting web access were introduced over 10 years ago. During the past ten years technology and business infrastructure have evolved and the number of mobile Internet users has increased all over the world. Service user interface, technology and business infrastructure have built a framework for service adaptation: they can act as enablers or as barriers. Users evaluate how the new technology adds value to their life based on multiple factors. This dissertation has its focus in the area of human-computer interaction research and practices. The overall goal of my research has been to improve the usability and the user experience of mobile Internet services. My research has sought answers to questions relevant in service development process. Questions have varied during the years, the main question being: How to design and create mobile Internet services that people can use and want to use? I have sought answers mostly from a human factors perspective, but have also taken the elements form technology and business infrastructure into consideration. In order to answer the questions raised in service development projects, we have investigated the mobile Internet services in the laboratory and in the field. My research has been conducted in various countries in 3 continents: Asia, Europe and North America. These studies revealed differences in mobile Internet use in different countries and between user groups. Studies in this dissertation were conducted between years 1998 and 2007 and show how questions and research methods have evolved during the time. Good service creation requires that all three factors: technology, business infrastructure and users are taken in consideration. When using knowledge on users in decision making, it is important to understand that the different phases of the service development cycle require the different kind of information on users. It is not enough to know about the users, the knowledge about users has to be transferred into decisions. The service has to be easy to use so that people can use it. This is related to usability. Usability is a very important factor in service adoption, but it is not enough. The service has to have relevant content from user perspective. The content is the reason why people want to use the service. In addition to the content and the ease of use, people evaluate the goodness of the service based on many other aspects: the cost, the availability and the reliability of the system for example. A good service is worth trying and after the first experience, is it worth using. These aspects are considered to influence the 'user experience' of the system. In this work I use lexical analysis to evaluate how the words "usability" and "user experience" are used in mobile HCI conference papers during the past 10 years. The use of both words has increased during the period and reflects the evolution of research questions and methodology over time

Towards An Approach For Multi-device Interface Design

This paper proposes an approach for multi-device interface design that extends pre-designed interfaces keeping the original application conceptual model without loosing its usability, The proposal reinterprets general aspects of well known Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) lifecycle models and can be extended to the design of any interactive product. When validated through a simple transformation between a large and a small screen interface in an HCI domain, it shall point to a much less maintenance cost/complexity and a better usability, ensuring the user's satisfaction.125Andrade, A.R., Munson, E.V., Pimentel, M.G.C., Engineering web applications with xml and xslt Proceedings of LA-Web 2004 IEEE CS Press, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, pp. 86-93Buyukkokten, O., Kaljuvee, O., Garcia-Molina, H., Paepcke, A., Winograd, T., Efficient web browsing on handheld devices using page and form summarization (2002) Proceedings of ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS). New York, USA, 20, pp. 82-115Furnas, G.W., Deerwester, S., Dumais, S.T., Landauer, T.K., Harshman, R.A., Streeter, L.A., Lochbaum, K.E., Information retrieval using a singular value decomposition model of latent semantic structure Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Research & Development in Information Retrieval, 1988, pp. 465-480Hinz, M., Fiala, Z., Wehner, F., Personalization-based optimization of web interfaces for mobile devices Proceedings of the Mobile HCI 2004 Glasgow, Scotland, pp. 204-215Lam, H., Baudisch, P., Summary thumbnails: Readable overviews for small screen web browsers Proceedings of CHI 2005, Portland, or, pp. 681-690Mackay, B., Watters, C., Duffy, J., Web page transformation when switching devices Proceedings of the Mobile HCI 2004, Glasgow, Scotland, pp. 228-239Milic-Frayling, N., Sommerer, R., SmartView: Enhanced document viewer for mobile devices (2002) MSR Technical ReportNorman, D., (1988) The Design of Everyday Things, , Basic Books, New YorkPreece, J., Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., (2002) Interaction Design: Beyond Human-computer Interaction, , Wiley & SonsRossi, G., Schwabe, D., Lyardet, F., Web application models are more than conceptual models Proceedings of ER'99, Springer, Paris, France, 1999, pp. 239-25