Designing graphical interface programming languages for the end user

This thesis sets out to answer three simple questions: What tools are available for novice programmers to program GUIs? Are those tools fulfilling their role? Can anything be done to make better tools? Despite being simple questions, the answers are not so easily constructed. In answering the first question, it was necessary to examine the range of tools available and decide upon criteria which could be used to identify tools aimed specifically at the novice programmer (there being no currently agreed criteria for their identification). Having identified these tools, it was then necessary to construct a framework within which they could be sensibly compared. The answering of the second question required an investigation of what were the successful features of current tools and which features were less successful. Success or failure of given features was determined by research in both programming language design and studies of programmer satisfaction. Having discovered what should be retained and discarded from current systems, the answering of the third question required the construction of new systems through blending elements from visual languages, program editors and fourth generation languages. These final prototypes illustrate a new way of thinking about and constructing the next generation of GUI programming languages for the novice

Evaluating the relevance of the “Real Access” criteria as a framework for rural HCI research

Developing ICT software that is useful and usable in a rural context poses many problems. One of the major difficulties is understanding the real needs of the target users and the constraints imposed by the rural environment. Many techniques exist in the field of human computer interaction (HCI) that attempt to understand the needs of the target user but many are not useful in a rural context (or a least not when applied in a standard way). This paper presents some existing HCI research techniques that are applicable in a rural context and shows how they fit into the Bridges.org ‘Real Access’ framework.NRF, Telkom, Siemens, THRIP, IDRC, SANPADDepartment of HE and Training approved lis

Orbit Fitting and Uncertainties for Kuiper Belt Objects

We present a procedure for determination of positions and orbital elements, and associated uncertainties, of outer Solar System planets. The orbit-fitting procedure is greatly streamlined compared to traditional methods because acceleration can be treated as a perturbation to the inertial motion of the body. These techniques are immediately applicable to Kuiper Belt Objects, for which recovery observations are costly. Our methods produce positional estimates and uncertainty ellipses even in the face of the substantial degeneracies of short-arc orbit fits; the sole a priori assumption is that the orbit should be bound or nearly so. We use these orbit-fitting techniques to derive a strategy for determining Kuiper Belt orbits with a minimal number of observations.Comment: 21 pages AASTeX5, 3 figures, accepted to AJ. Associated software available at http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/users/gary

Using HCI to leverage communication technology

Uue of Mobile Technologies in the Developing Worl

Toward Empowered Design

Pragmatic design requires no radical alterations to the existing technology ecology and has successfully provided many viable solutions. Given the skills limitations within the developing world, however, developers also need a new design focus that views the user as designer

Extending Dynamic Queries to Handle Uncertain Data.

Dynamic querying is a technique which has been used successfully to enable novice users to gain access to and insight into data in databases. Some multimedia archives (such as archives of African art) contain data which have vague locations in time and space, that is, although there is some idea of when and where the entity originated, the precise information is unknown. This uncertainty creates problems with the display and querying of the data and so the data is generally not accessible to novice users. In this study we extend dynamic querying techniques to work with African art data with uncertain origins in time and space. We present methods for storing, visualising and querying such uncertain data within the framework of dynamic querying. Results of user tests indicate that our approach was clear to users and that users could successfully perform simple queries using the visual query tools. A similar approach of extending dynamic querying techniques could apply to other domains with any one-dimensional attribute data with probabilistic uncertainty. In this way we show how it is possible for novice users to query large databases with complex uncertain attributes

Investigating the use of Photo Collection Structures for Photo Searching

In this paper, we investigate the use of photo collection structures in aiding the rapid retrieval of events, single photographs and sets of photographs sharing a common property. As these structures encode a great deal of useful contextual information, we advocate for the need for photo searching interfaces to exploit and expose this information. In our study of people’s photo collection structures, we found that people organise their photographs into event folders. Providing rapid access to events, singles and properties equates to locating event folders quickly. When event names are well known, we advocate for the use keyword based searches. Temporal based navigation becomes increasing important when event folders are less well known. We found a significant amount of data showing that people do organise and structure their photo collections more than previous literature suggests. The number of different property folders we found, illustrates the range of different tasks people perform when structuring and organizing their photo collections. In concluding this paper, we also make a number of recommendations for photo searching interfaces

Effectively Exploiting Server Log Information for Large Scale Web Sites

With the continuing growth of the Internet, an increasing number of organisations are incorporating the Web into their business activities. The appeal of a site to users in terms of both attractiveness and usability determines whether it will improve profits or cause on–line failure. It is thus vital that web site designers have access to tools that will aid them in evaluating site usage so that they can identify problem areas and alter them accordingly. At present, the most popular tools utilised in this evaluation make use of a technique called log file analysis, a process by which server log files are parsed to extract information about visitors to a site. However, when visualising this information, current tools have either neglected site structure or else failed to utilise properties unique to web sites. We address both these issues by developing a visualisation of server log data that incorporates site structure and caters specifically for web sites by exploiting their unique characteristics

Interfaces to Mobile Virtual Reality

In this paper, we describe a project which uses PDAs to provide an interactive experience with a virtual environment. In particular, we focus on the navigational aspects of allowing the users to move through, and view, the environment. As this system will be deployed in a museum, it was crucial that the navigation be as intuitive as possible. To that end, we developed and evaluated two prototypes: one was based purely on gesture, whilst the other used a combination of gesture and keypad. For the purposes of our application, the combination of keypad and gesture provided the most effective