PAPER for an Educational Digital Library

GeogDL is a digital library of geography examination resources designed to assist students in revising for a national geography examination in Singapore. As part of an iterative design process, we carried out participatory design and brainstorming with student and teacher design partners. The first study involved prospective student design partners. In response to the first study, we describe in this paper an implementation of PAPER - Personalised Adaptive Pathways for Exam Resources - a new bundle of personalized, interactive services containing a mock exam and a personal coach. The “mock exam” provides a simulation of the actual geography examination while the “personal coach” provides recommendations of exam questions tailored to suit individual ability levels. This paper concludes with findings from a second study involving teacher design partners to further refine GeogDL.Accepted versio

Math information retrieval: User requirements and prototype implementation

10.1145/1378889.1378921Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries187-19

Design guidelines and user-centred digital libraries

Abstract. As current digital libraries are becoming more complex, the facilities provided by them will increase and the difficulty of learning associated with the complexity of using these facilities will also increase. In order to produce usable and useful interactive systems, designers need to ensure that good design features are incorporated into the systems, taking into consideration end-users' needs and cultural backgrounds. We carried out a study to investigate useful design features digital libraries should have. The study provides insights on the usability impact of digital libraries for task completion and end-users ' perceived impressions on the effectiveness of the digital libraries. The results also suggest that there is little provision on the interface to cater to end-users ' browsing and inter-cultural needs. Hence, this paper also discusses design guidelines for the design of user-centred digital libraries.

‘It's effective but should I bother?’ A study of personal protection measures against Malaria in urban India

OBJECTIVES: Malaria affects millions of people in urban and rural India every year. This study addresses two main gaps in current research: 1) attitudes towards personal protective strategies against Malaria among urban populations; and 2) understanding of the extent to which urban health information seeking preferences shape preventive behaviours. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional face-to-face surveys using stratified sampling design. METHODS: A 60-min survey was carried out to 1000 middle-of-pyramid (MOP) population in five main cities in India by trained interviewers. Variables assessed included perceived effectiveness and actual practice of 14 scientific and indigenous personal protection methods, Malaria-related attitudes (susceptibility, severity and response efficacy) and health information seeking preferences. RESULTS: Actual practice of Malaria preventive behaviours was found to be significantly lower than the perceived effectiveness of each of the fourteen scientific and indigenous methods. Television, newspapers, and mobile phones were reported as the top three preferred media for seeking public health information. Lastly, perceived susceptibility, response efficacy, and health-related media use were found to play significant roles in predicting actual practice behaviours. CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlights a need for health authorities to focus on translating positive attitudes to actual practice of preventive behaviours. Communication efforts may focus on the use of TV, newspapers and mobile phones for greater reach and efficacy. Other implications for Malaria prevention programs are discussed.Accepted versio

Giving Ideas an Equal Chance: Inclusion and Representation in Participatory Design with Children

Participatory Design (PD) in various guises is a popular approach with the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) community. In studying it as a method very little work has considered the fundamentals of participation, namely how children choose to participate and how their ideas are included and represented. This paper highlights ethical concerns about PD with children within the context of information needed to consent. In helping children understand participation in PD, a central aspect is the necessity to help children understand how their design ideas are used which itself challenges researchers to seek a fair and equitable process that is describable and defensible. The TRAck (tracking, representing and acknowledging) Method, is described as an initial process that could meet this need. This is evaluated, in two forms, in a PD study with 84 children. The TRAck Method encouraged careful scrutiny of designs and allowed the researchers to distil useful design ideas although these were maybe not the most imaginative. There is a trade off between the limitations of applying such a process to PD against the benefits of ensuring fullinformed involvement of children