Functional requirements of mobile application fisherman

Generally, un-usable information technology products and its unacceptability have been traced to the inability of the tech products to meet the needs and desire of the users, for whom the products are provided. And specifically, the Malaysia government has been recording same users neglect on information technological infrastructure provided despite huge amount of money invested on the ICT project, most especially for the rural dwellers. The major reason of this users’ unacceptability have been traced to lack of proactive users’ requirements gathering as expected to be part of the product development process. To address this in the intending development of mobile application for fishermen; who are also members of the target group to be provided mobile technologies by the Malaysian government; this study aims to validate the functional requirements of mobile applications for fishermen using a Qualitative-biased users’ participatory design methodology which included a prototype development process. The result of the study shows that ability to get weather updates, real time market price and general fishing tips are validated functional requirements of a mobile application centered to be used by fishermen

Conceptual design framework for information visualization to support multidimensional datasets in higher education institutions

Information Visualization (InfoVis) enjoys diverse adoption and applicability because of its strength in solving the problem of information overload inherent in institutional data. Policy and decision makers of higher education institutions (HEIs) are also experiencing information overload while interacting with students‟ data, because of its multidimensionality. This constraints decision making processes, and therefore requires a domain-specific InfoVis conceptual design framework which will birth the domain‟s InfoVis tool. This study therefore aims to design HEI Students‟ data-focused InfoVis (HSDI) conceptual design framework which addresses the content delivery techniques and the systematic processes in actualizing the domain specific InfoVis. The study involved four phases: 1) a users‟ study to investigate, elicit and prioritize the students‟ data-related explicit knowledge preferences of HEI domain policy. The corresponding students‟ data dimensions are then categorised, 2) exploratory study through content analysis of InfoVis design literatures, and subsequent mapping with findings from the users‟ study, to propose the appropriate visualization, interaction and distortion techniques for delivering the domain‟s explicit knowledge preferences, 3) conceptual development of the design framework which integrates the techniques‟ model with its design process–as identified from adaptation of software engineering and InfoVis design models, 4) evaluation of the proposed framework through expert review, prototyping, heuristics evaluation, and users‟ experience evaluation. For an InfoVis that will appropriately present and represent the domain explicit knowledge preferences, support the students‟ data multidimensionality and the decision making processes, the study found that: 1) mouse-on, mouse-on-click, mouse on-drag, drop down menu, push button, check boxes, and dynamics cursor hinting are the appropriate interaction techniques, 2) zooming, overview with details, scrolling, and exploration are the appropriate distortion techniques, and 3) line chart, scatter plot, map view, bar chart and pie chart are the appropriate visualization techniques. The theoretical support to the proposed framework suggests that dictates of preattentive processing theory, cognitive-fit theory, and normative and descriptive theories must be followed for InfoVis to aid perception, cognition and decision making respectively. This study contributes to the area of InfoVis, data-driven decision making process, and HEI students‟ data usage process

Towards developing an instrument in measuring the need for InfoVis

The increasing trend of data volume and its superabundance have been endangering institutional data and specifically, higher education institutions (HEI) students’ data.The most challenging is the need for HEI to make sense from their large datasets, through gaining insights and understanding the pattern and trends of events therein. Deductions from extant literatures strongly indicate the presence of information overload as the factor constraining HEI decision makers from making wealthy use of the institutional datasets.However, no study has empirically investigated the presence of information overload in HEI students’ data management.To attend to this, this study aims at developing an instrument to be used in measuring the presence of information overload, and justifiably, the need for Information Visualization (InfoVis) –being an argued better tool for institutional data management. This study employs quantitative research method withadministration of 9-item survey questionnaire. Thirty-two (32) respondents are purposively drawn among HEI decision makers.Descriptive statistics is used as the statistical technique to find the mean valueof the computed variable based on the normal Likert 5-point scale.The result of the instrument reliability testgives a value of 0.712 as the Cronbach’s Alpha value which suggests that the items designed are internally consistent, and a weighted mean value of 4.03 strongly supportsthe hypothesis that HEI experiences information overload

Designing information visualization for higher education institutions: A pre-design study

The multidimensional of students’ data and the limitations of the currently-used data management tools in higher education institutions (HEIs) have been identified as causes of constrained decision-making process in the domain.This, therefore, necessitates a pre-design study for the HEI students’ datafocused InfoVis.The objectives of this study are to identify the prevailing practices of HEI data management, the data analytics methods that are generally employed by HEI data analysts and the comprehensive dimensions that are related to HEI students and adequate for conveying the domain explicit knowledge preferences. A mixed method approach with survey questionnaire and interview as data collection methods, is used.The contributions of this study, among others, are: (i) identification of the pattern and relationship of the domains explicit knowledge preferences; and (ii) the elicitation and description of students’ data dimensions.These are expected to form the basis for the choice and implementation of the content delivery techniques in designing the domain-focused InfoVis.Our future works therefore entail developing the HEI InfoVis conceptual framework, designing the HEI students’ data-focused InfoVis and conducting its users’ experimental evaluation

Relationship between information security awareness and information security threat

Information security threat has been reported to be on the increase among users of internet technologies, especially the academic communities,comprising the students,lecturers and tutors.In attending to this situation, past studies have either conceptually discussed or empirically studied some related factors to information security threat generally, with few (if at all any) studied information security awareness relationship within the conceptual framework of community training, vulnerability to threat, perceived threat severity and compliance to security policies with information security threat. And none has studied this among the Universiti Utara Malaysia community.This paper studies these factors in view of the relationship between information security awareness and information security threat among the Universiti Utara Malaysia students’ community.This study uses Quantitative method, with Pearson correlation as the statistical tool. The findings of this study showed that community training; vulnerability to threat, perceived threat severity and compliance to security policies within the concept of information security awareness is positively related to information security threat

Functional requirements of mobile application for fishermen

Unusable information technology products and its unacceptability have been traced to the inability of the tech products to meet the needs and desire of the users, for whom the products are provided.Malaysia government has also been recording same users’ neglect on information technological infrastructure provided despite huge amount of money invested on the ICT project, most especially for the rural dwellers.The major reason of this users’ unacceptability have been traced to lack of proactive users’ requirements gathering.To address this in the intending development of mobile application for fishermen; who are also members of the target group to be provided mobile technologies by the Malaysian government, this study aims to validate the functional requirements of mobile applications for fishermen using a Qualitative-based users’ participatory design methodology.The result of the study shows that fishermen’s ability to get weather updates, water safety information, track of storm and rain intensity, advertizing fish catch, real time market price and general fishing tips are functional requirements of a mobile application for fishermen

A conceptual framework for students’ data-driven decision making process in higher education institutions

With the increase in volume and the wide range of data needed to inform decisions at all levels of education system, federal and state ministries of education, districts and also schools have been demanding proactive and data-driven decision making (DDDM) frameworks, as an approach to enhance policy and decision making.In dealing with DDDM, higher education institutions (HEI), among schools, are found to be the most in need of such decision-support frameworks, because of the volume of the data they deal with, and the sensitivities of the decisions they make.To attend to this, though with an exclusive focus on the HEI’s students, we propose a DDDM conceptual framework, using a Design Research Method.The method includes critical literature review, survey instrument administration on the HEI policymakers, and interview sessions with data management personnel. Our proposed conceptual framework shows (1) how DDDM can achieve effective students’ data usage and improved students-related decision making, (2) HEI decision makers’ data usages, their preferred explicit knowledge from the data, and the relationship with the appropriate data variables