Vid2U: facilitating students’ learning through video annotation for tablet device

Electronic learning (e-learning) applications are widely used in the Higher-Education institutions to deliver and share learning contents among the students. However, most of the e-learning applications are developed for offline or online desktops. Mobile learning (m-learning) is introduced to allow learners to experience the learning opportunities via mobile devices such as handheld computers, MP3 players, notebooks, mobile phones, and tablets. Interactive video refers to a technique which allows users to have some interactions with the media instead of watching a static video. One of the many ways of making video having the interactive elements is through video annotation. Although the use of video annotation is quite common in learning, there are still needs for more efforts on designing annotation facilities for video management in mobile learning environment. Apart from that, the application of video annotation on mobile devices is also still in its infancy, especially for recent devices like iPad, Microsoft Surface, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and others. The objective of the proposed mobile learning application, Vid2U is to provide the flexibility of accessing and managing video materials at anywhere and anytime, making learning even more widely available. The Vid2U is equipped with many functions such as allowing students to view lecture videos and other video materials related to the course when absent from classes. Students can also add, edit, and delete their lecture notes based on the lecture videos. The mobile-based application also allows students to search video materials related to all courses taken by them. Experimental results obtained from surveys have shown that the Vid2U is able to provide better learning environment for the university learners, which lead to a deeper level of learning engagement

Supporting social pretend play with a virtual toy

This paper presents selected results from a study designed to explore children's social pretend play in a virtual setting. Fourteen children (aged 5 - 8) played in pairs with a mobile-based game implemented on an Apple iPad. Interviews and video transcriptions were used to assess three types of social pretend play, which included solitary, simple and associative. Our findings revealed the ways children engaged with the virtual toy and demonstrate social pretend play. We discuss the implications of these findings and provide a series of design implications for designers and researchers

Mismatch between older adult's expectation and smartphone user interface

Smartphones have become ubiquitous communication tools for everybody, including older adults to stay connected with their family and access to information. However, mobile operators and developers mainly target the youngster cohort in mobile industry. With the rising ageing population, smartphone user interface and some mobile apps are not designed to cater the needs of older adults. This could hinder them from fully utilizing the smartphone functions and its services. A mobile-user interaction study using mixed-methods (questionnaire, interview and observation) was conducted to examine usability and user interface design issues of smartphone and mobile apps among 80 older adults in Malaysia. Four tasks design were ‘making voice calls’, ‘using phonebook’, ‘installing a mobile app from GooglePlay Store’, and ‘using WhatsApp’. The results were analysed both quantitatively (for usability evaluation) and qualitatively (for interviews and observation). The usability result revealed that the ‘voice call’ task had the highest success task completion rate (83.44%), followed by ‘phonebook’(70.16%), ‘mobile app download’(63.13%) and ‘using WhatsApp’ (60.42%). Three themes were emerged from the qualitative thematic analysis, which showed a mismatch between older adults’ expectation and smartphone user interface. A majority had never downloaded a mobile app before, and they had problems down loading it from Play Store. They perceived the Play Store feature as a place for children playing games. To close the discrepancy between user expectation and mobile design, the mobile designers and developers are required to consider the older adults’ needs for better usability of smartphone user interface design

Supporting social pretend play with a virtual toy

This paper presents selected results from a study designed to explore children's social pretend play in a virtual setting. Fourteen children (aged 5 - 8) played in pairs with a mobile-based game implemented on an Apple iPad. Interviews and video transcriptions were used to assess three types of social pretend play, which included solitary, simple and associative. Our findings revealed the ways children engaged with the virtual toy and demonstrate social pretend play. We discuss the implications of these findings and provide a series of design implications for designers and researchers

Measuring usability and children's enjoyment of a virtual toy in an imaginative play setting: a preliminary study

This paper recounts a preliminary evaluation of children’s imaginative play whilst interacting with a virtual toy. Children aged 5-8 years old played with a virtual toy with a friend and their enjoyment and satisfaction of playing with the toy were evaluated. The complexity of social pretend play and the involvement of communicative strategies were taken into consideration to assist the inquiry of identifying the ability of the virtual toy to support children’s imaginative play. Our analysis demonstrated that children who managed to play imaginatively applied the social pretend play complexity and communicative strategies during the play session. The virtual toy supported children’s imaginative play, hence these findings can help to stimulate future research and the design of virtual toys to support play for remotely separated children

Promoting awareness of depression with a mobile application: a usability study and evaluation

This paper reports selected results from a study designed to understand the potential and limitations of a mobile application in promoting health awareness of depression to patients, their families and others. The mobile application was developed with a user-centered approach, which emphasized user preferences and opinions throughout an iterative process of development. It comprised medical information about depression, and causes, symptoms and methods of treatment. We conducted several design and evaluation sessions with a group of users (patients, their family, doctors, nurses and general users). Our findings demonstrate that the mobile medical application has the potential to improve and increase awareness among patients and their family members

Presentation mining tool: from slides to mind maps

Slide presentations such as the PowerPoint presents knowledge by the subject matter expert in a linear sequence. Nonetheless, post-presentation, the knowledge is actually reconstructed differently by the learners depending on their personal understanding over the entire presentation. To enhance learning, this paper presents a presentation mining tool that is able to extract keywords and key phrases from a collection of Microsoft PowerPoint slides and generate a mind map with topics and subtopics based on the extracted keywords. The mind map produced by the system contains the main topic as the central node of the map with branches connecting main topic to subtopics. The mind map produced through automatic extraction of topic and subtopics is aimed to help learners to concentrate on the entire concept rather than following through the slides sequentially

Expert‘s usability evaluation of the pelvic floor muscle training mHealth App for pregnant women

Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is the first line in managing urinary incontinence. Unfortunately, personal, and social barriers involvement hinder pregnant women to perform PFMT. Therefore, a Kegel Exercise Pregnancy Training (KEPT) app was developed to bridge the accessibility barriers among incontinent pregnant women. This study aimed to evaluate the usability properties of the KEPT app developed for pregnant women to improve their pelvic floor muscle training. A purposive sampling method of the experts was conducted from a sample of experts in informatics and a physician with a special interest in informatics. The design activities were planned in the following sequence: cognitive walkthrough for learnability of the app, heuristic evaluation for the interface of the app and usability questionnaire to evaluate the usability properties (quantitative assessment) of the app. The mHealth application usability questionnaire (MAUQ) was used as its assessment tool to assess the application usability. A total of four experts were involved in this study. Cognitive walkthrough revealed that the KEPT app has several major learnability issues especially the training interface and language consistency to ensure its learnability. Heuristic evaluation showed that the training interface must provide additional information regarding the displayed icon. KEPT app was rated by MAUQ being as ease-of-use, the interface and satisfaction with the usefulness by all the experts which scored 5.80/7.0, 5.57/7.0, and 5.83/7.0, respectively. The suggestions were shared to assist future researchers and developers in developing PFMT mHealth app

Calibration on co-located ad-hoc multi mobile system

This paper presents findings about connectivity issues when using clock wise swipe gesture of mobiTop system. The mobiTop system is a multi-mobile system that allows users to come together at any location and perform collaborative tasks and information sharing by extending their mobile devices. This study investigates the user experience issues when multiple users calibrate and align multiple mobile devices using the mobiTop system. From the study, users took an average of 5.47 minutes to initiate connections between multiple devices. The finding shows that the existing calibration setting is too complicated for the users despite the step-by-step tutorial provided by the system. The findings also show that although only one user is needed to initiate to connectivity, most of the users tend to contribute towards simultaneous connectivity input leading to system disorientation. Following this, several connectivity methods explored that can be employed by the mobiTop system to minimize connectivity time and promote a seamless integration between the users and the system

MobiTop: interactivity issues in a multi-mobile system

Mobile devices are increasingly becoming an important part of technology. As the demand for handling information grows, so does the need for collaboration in integrating and managing multiple forms of information. With its small screen, it is relatively uncomfortable for a group of people to perform task collaboratively. This paper presents MobiTop-a multi-mobile system that integrates mobile devices that works seamlessly together - promoting an extended screen size for the mobile devices to support collaboration. However, interactivity issues such as bezels and screen orientation are found to restrict users from performing collaborative tasks favourably. This paper discusses the interactivity issues pertaining multi-mobile systems and offers guidelines for designers