Usability inspection for sonification applications

Bonification is the representation of data using mainly non-speech sound for the purpose of communication and interpretation. The process and technique of converting the data into sound is called the sonification technique. One or more techniques might be required by a sonification application. However, sonification techniques are not generally suitable for all kinds of data, and often custom techniques are used - where the design is tailored to the domain and nature of the data as well as the users' required tasks within the application. Therefore, it is important to assure the usability of the technique for the specific domain application being developed. In previously reported research, most designers of sonification applications have needed to develop at least a prototype for user testing. The result are interpreted and analysed to look for potential problems and solutions to improve the design. This dissertation has developed a new systematic usability inspection approach called the Task Interpretation Walkthrough (TIW) for the design of sonification application before they go to the initial development phase. It is hypothesized that designers of sonification applications will be able to detect significantly more important potential usability problems before the implementation phase by analysing the interaction between the user and the application as well as paying attention to the different stages of how the data is transformed into sound. It uses two new models - the Sonification Application (SA) model and the User Interpretation Construction (UIC) model. Four experiments with human subjects were carried out to study the feasibility and effectiveness of Task Interpretation Walkthrough inspection by comparing it against two widely used techniques; Heuristic Evaluation and Cognitive Walkthrough. The sonification designs being inspected were a Mobile Phone Joystick Text-Entry with Sound (Experiments I and II), a Diagnosis Tool for Analysis of The Motion and Usage of a Patient's Arm (Experiment III); and an Audio-Visual Analysis Tool of Cervical Sample Slides (Experiment IV). The participants included sound researchers (Experiment II); and students with a background in music technology and software engineering (Experiments I, III and IV), acting either individually or in 2-person groups. The results have shown that the research hypothesis is supported, where the significantly important usability problems were able to be detected before the implementation phase. From the inspection method comparison study, results showed the Task Interpretation Walkthrough to be more effective than the existing techniques (Heuristic Evaluation and Cognitive Walkthrough)

Finding “Appeal” Factors in Local Animation Character Design: Formalistic and Visual Semiotic Analysis (FVSA)

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui faktor ‘daya tarik’ dalam desain karakter animasi lokal. ‘Daya tarik’ adalah salah satu dari 12 prinsip desain animasi dan sering dianggap ambigu. Untuk mencapai ‘daya tarik’, salah satu metode yang digunakan adalah Viewer’s Impression Words (VIW) yang merupakan modifikasi dari Kansei Words (KW). Metode ini menggabungkan teori formalistik dan semiotik visual untuk mencapai Viewer’s Impression Words (VIW), bagian penting dari Kansei Engineering. Hasil penelitian daripada ujikaji ini, dapat disimpulkan bahawa metod ini mampu untuk membantu peserta ujikaji memilih kata VIW yang sesuai seterusnya ke arah aktiviti selanjutnya iaitu proses prinsip longgar. Metode ini dilihat sebagai teknik baru untuk memperbaiki proses dalam memperoleh VIW atau Kansei Words untuk digunakan dalam latihan pengukuran untuk menemukan pengaruh (emosi) dalam memahami ‘daya tarik.’ Ini untuk mencapai prinsip longgar dalam desain karakter animasi lokal.Kata kunci: Kata Impressi Penonton, Desain Berasaskan Pengguna, Desain Karakte

The study of correlation between affective and cognitive response on educational video mobile-learning

This paper studies the correlation between affective and cognitive response from students toward educational video mobile-learning. In theory, the engagement experience on educational video can be heightened with the avail-ability of time point feature on YouTube because of user control and the benefits of flexibility in learning. However, the time point feature is only accessible for desktop and laptop users, whereas the feature is inoperative for smartphone users. Hence, a prototype of interactive video mobile-learning, Pocket IVML apps, was developed as an alternative video mobile-learning with cue point feature to examine the possibility of a correlation between the affective and cognitive response among students. Three different production styles of educational video mobile-learning were involved in the experiment; non-linear video with visual effects (interactive video mobile-learning), linear video with visual effects (green screen) and linear video with no visual effects (screencast). The data extracted from affective and cognitive response was then analyzed using Pearson's r and Scatter Plots to measure the bonding between affective and cognitive variables. The study results show the possibility of a relationship between the affective and cognitive responses elicited from video production style

The study of affective value in educational video production style using kansei engineering method

ABSTRACT This paper presents the emotional responses among higher institution learners towards the production style of an educational video. The video design concepts for each production style were categorized into three sections, non-linear video with visual effects (interactive video mobile-learning), linear video with visual effects (green screen) and linear video with no visual effects (screencast). The Kansei Engineering approach was used to measure the learners’ emotion reaction on each of the production style. Through Kansei Engineering method, the outcomes presented variance of active and passive emotion reaction towards the production style, difference feelings responses caused by the video design, whereas at the end most learners agreed that the inclusion of interactivity and aesthetics in video design will increase their motivation to learn from the educational video

Pendekatan analisis formalistik dan semiotik visual: mencari faktor appeal dalam watak animasi tempatan

Penulisan ini bertujuan untuk membincangkan pencapaian dan pemahaman prinsip ‘Appeal’ dalam reka bentuk watak animasi lokal. ‘Appeal’ adalah salah satu daripada 12 prinsip reka bentuk animasi dan kerap kali dianggap sebagai kurang jelas. Untuk mencapai ‘daya tarik’, salah satu kaedah yang digunakan ialah kata-kata kunci impresi penonton atau Viewer’s Impression Words (VIW), yang merupakan pengubahsuaian dari Kansei Words (KW). Kaedah ini menggabungkan teori formalistik dan semiotik visual untuk mencapai VIW, iaitu bahagian penting dalam Kejuruteraan Kansei. Kaedah ini disarankan sebagai teknik baharu untuk memperbaiki kaedah dalam memperoleh kata-kata VIW atau KW untuk digunakan dalam latihan pengukuran bagi menemukan kesan (emosi) dalam memahami ‘appeal’ sehingga dapat mencapai prinsip-prinsip longgar dalam reka bentuk watak animasi tempatan

Visual Analytics: Design Study for Exploratory Analytics on Peer Profiles, Activity and Learning Performance for MOOC Forum Activity Assessment

The massively open online course (MOOC) has become an increasingly popular alternative platform for education due to its open concept and free features. Due to its features that allow enrolment on a massive scale and participation across the globe, it presented new analytic challenges. The vast amount and variety of data generated pose challenges for the learning analytics community to analyse especially concerning peer presence and peer learning. Forum activity data offers the opportunity to assess the relationship between forum activities and user backgrounds with the learner’s progression and retention rate. Furthermore, there are several challenges in implementing data visualization in real-world scenarios such as different task characterisation compared to the existing analytics, along with varied factors on the usability of visualization among the domain analysts. Despite many research on learning analytics, most of the approaches were data-driven and there were only a handful of studies that were focused on interactive visualization design to facilitate MOOC forum user activity assessment using real-world scenarios and educational theories-driven. Our design study aims to investigate and formulate a visual analytic design to facilitate enriched visual analysis towards assessing forum activity in Malaysian MOOC, particularly in pattern and relationship exploration on the user diverse background and activities with the learning performance. This paper presents our review on visual learning analytics and current MOOC practice in Malaysia, our design study methodology and proposed conceptual visual analytics design on visualizing forum activity data

Human motion recognition based on Kinect sensor and leap motion controller

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where objects reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information. In essence, emulating and altering reality that include, in relatively real-time and precision, position and motion tracking (sensors like Kinect and Leap Motion Controller), match moving (techniques allowing insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation and motion), and finally motion capturing (process of recording movements of objects or people). This review is dedicated to the question of what object recognition (motion tracking, match moving and motion capture) is and how this technique can be identified, thus synthesizing knowledge in the field. The former is further clarified, elaborated, and compared using input sensors like Kinect and Leap Motion Controller

Rule-based Procedural Generation of Item in Role-playing Game

This paper demonstrates the significance of rule-based procedural generation of item in role-playing game. The main aims of this project are to: implement rule-based randomized algorithm and totally randomized algorithm in generating item procedurally in Role-Playing Game (RPG), and compare the advantage of rule-based randomized algorithm against totally randomized algorithm in item drop mechanism. Experimental results demonstrate success with all aims: rule-based randomized algorithm is proven to be a better game changing factor in procedural generation of item as it can control the prolific generation of strong items in the early stage of the game. This helps to balance the game and prevents any snow-balling effect as the game progresses

Survey on geographic visual display techniques in epidemiology: Taxonomy and characterization

Many works have been done on the topic of Geographic Visual Display with different objectives and approaches. There are studies to compare the traditional cartography techniques (the traditional term of Geographic Visual Display (GVD) without Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)) to Modern GIS which are also known as Geo-visualization, some literature differentiates and highlight the commonalities of features and architectures of different Geographic Visual Display tools (from layers and clusters to dot and color and more). Furthermore, with the existence of more advanced tools which support data exploration, few tasks are done to evaluate how those tools are used to handle complex and multivariate spatial-temporal data. Several test on usability and interactivity of tools toward user's needs or preferences, some even develop frameworks that address user's concern in a wide array of tasks, and others prove how these tools are able to stimulate the visual thought process and help in decision making or event prediction amongst decision-makers. This paper surveyed and categorized these research articles into 2 categories: Traditional Cartography (TC) and Geo-visualization (G). This paper will classify each category by their techniques and tasks that contribute to the significance of data representation in Geographic Visual Display and develop perspectives of each area and evaluating trends of Geographic Visual Display Techniques. Suggestions and ideas on what mechanisms can be used to improve and diversify Geographic Visual Display Techniques are provided at the end of this survey