Adapting usability heuristics to evaluate Facebook according to elderly

La inspección de usabilidad es un método de evaluación llevada a cabo por uno o más expertos en HCI, sujetos con bases teóricas y prácticas sólidas para la observación formal y objetiva de un producto. Uno de los métodos más utilizados es la evaluación heurística, término acuñado por Jakob Nielsen en 1989, que consiste en utilizar un set de heurísticas de usabilidad para examinar el producto y analizar su grado de cumplimiento. Debido al uso de Facebook cada vez mas extensivo por parte de adultos mayores, se realiza en este artículo una evaluación heurística sobre esta aplicación, donde principios de usabilidad han sido adaptados para adecuarlos al perfil de un adulto mayor como a su interacción con las cuestiones colaborativas y funciones de groupware que caracterizan a las redes sociales. Resultados de este proceso de inspección será de suma importancia para entender si las aplicaciones actuales consideran al adulto mayor como posible usuario de las mismas, respetando principios de usabilidad acordes a dicho perfil.A usability inspection is an evaluation method carried out by one or more experts in HCI, individuals with solid theoretical and practical foundations for the formal and objective observation of a product. One of the most used methods is the heuristic evaluation, a term coined by Jakob Nielsen in 1989, that consists of using a set of usability heuristics to examine a product and analyze its degree of compliance. Due to the ever-growing use of Facebook by older adults, a heuristic evaluation of this application is carried out in this article, where principles of usability have been adapted to fit the profile of an older adult and the interaction with collaborative aspects and groupware functions that are characteristic of social networks. The results of this process of inspection will be of utmost importance to understand whether the current applications consider the older adult as a possible user, respecting principles of usability consistent with their profile.Laboratorio de Investigación en Nuevas Tecnologías Informática

Shortages and challenges in augmentative communication through tangible interaction using a user-centered design and assessment process

In this article, we present an assessment process on a tangible interaction application oriented to individuals with complex communication needs, called ACoTI, and details about the main results obtained thus far. The process is based on a set of decisions that have been surveyed as key elements for assessing this type of experiences, based on a background review that was carried out. In addition to that, it has taken into account the contribution of key players from the special education field and it is the foundation for the user-centered and evolutionary design of the application. A number of findings and challenges that open up the door to keep contributing to this specific area was presented. For instance, creating an authoring tool that is available for the educators to be able to generate themselves customized activities for their students, considering the specific needs of each of them

A note on the violation of the Einstein relation in a driven moderately dense granular gas

The Einstein relation for a driven moderately dense granular gas in $d$-dimensions is analyzed in the context of the Enskog kinetic equation. The Enskog equation neglects velocity correlations but retains spatial correlations arising from volume exclusion effects. As expected, there is a breakdown of the Einstein relation $\epsilon=D/(T_0\mu)\neq 1$ relating diffusion $D$ and mobility $\mu$, $T_0$ being the temperature of the impurity. The kinetic theory results also show that the violation of the Einstein relation is only due to the strong non-Maxwellian behavior of the reference state of the impurity particles. The deviation of $\epsilon$ from unity becomes more significant as the solid volume fraction and the inelasticity increase, especially when the system is driven by the action of a Gaussian thermostat. This conclusion qualitatively agrees with some recent simulations of dense gases [Puglisi {\em et al.}, 2007 {\em J. Stat. Mech.} P08016], although the deviations observed in computer simulations are more important than those obtained here from the Enskog kinetic theory. Possible reasons for the quantitative discrepancies between theory and simulations are discussed.Comment: 6 figure

Non-equilibrium phase transition in a sheared granular mixture

The dynamics of an impurity (or tracer particle) immersed in a dilute granular gas under uniform shear flow is investigated. A non-equilibrium phase transition is identified from an exact solution of the inelastic Boltzmann equation for a granular binary mixture in the tracer limit, where the impurity carries either a vanishing (disordered phase) or a finite (ordered phase) fraction of the total kinetic energy of the system. In the disordered phase, the granular temperature ratio (impurity "temperature" over that of the host fluid) is finite, while it diverges in the ordered phase. To correctly capture this extreme violation of energy equipartition, we show that the picture of an impurity enslaved to the host fluid is insufficient

Third and fourth degree collisional moments for inelastic Maxwell models

The third and fourth degree collisional moments for $d$-dimensional inelastic Maxwell models are exactly evaluated in terms of the velocity moments, with explicit expressions for the associated eigenvalues and cross coefficients as functions of the coefficient of normal restitution. The results are applied to the analysis of the time evolution of the moments (scaled with the thermal speed) in the free cooling problem. It is observed that the characteristic relaxation time toward the homogeneous cooling state decreases as the anisotropy of the corresponding moment increases. In particular, in contrast to what happens in the one-dimensional case, all the anisotropic moments of degree equal to or less than four vanish in the homogeneous cooling state for $d\geq 2$.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures; v2: addition of two new reference

El mundo necesita ingenieras: ¿quieres ser una?

La Universidad de Zaragoza fue, en 2008, la primera de las españolas en organizar el Girls’ Day, cuyo objetivo es acercar a las jóvenes al ámbito de la Ingeniería y la Arquitectura, y promover en ellas más vocaciones tecnológicas. Desde entonces, mujeres profesionales de empresas, instituciones, laboratorios y grupos de investigación han explicado a miles de jóvenes estudiantes sus experiencias personales y les han mostrado que las tecnológicas también son profesiones de mujeres. En la rama de Ingeniería y Arquitectura, las mujeres apenas constituyen el 22,9 % del alumnado

Hydrodynamics of inelastic Maxwell models

An overview of recent results pertaining to the hydrodynamic description (both Newtonian and non-Newtonian) of granular gases described by the Boltzmann equation for inelastic Maxwell models is presented. The use of this mathematical model allows us to get exact results for different problems. First, the Navier--Stokes constitutive equations with explicit expressions for the corresponding transport coefficients are derived by applying the Chapman--Enskog method to inelastic gases. Second, the non-Newtonian rheological properties in the uniform shear flow (USF) are obtained in the steady state as well as in the transient unsteady regime. Next, an exact solution for a special class of Couette flows characterized by a uniform heat flux is worked out. This solution shares the same rheological properties as the USF and, additionally, two generalized transport coefficients associated with the heat flux vector can be identified. Finally, the problem of small spatial perturbations of the USF is analyzed with a Chapman--Enskog-like method and generalized (tensorial) transport coefficients are obtained.Comment: 40 pages, 10 figures; v2: final version published in a special issue devoted to "Granular hydrodynamics