User experience improvement of japanese language mobile learning application through mental model and A/B testing

Advances in smartphone technology have led to the strong emergence of mobile learning (m-learning) on the market to support foreign language learning purposes, especially for the Japanese language. No matter what kind of m-learning application, their goal should help learners to learn the Japanese language independently. However, popular Japanese m-learning applications only accommodate on enhancing reading, vocabulary and writing ability so that user experience issues are still prevalent and may affect the learning outcome. In the context of user experience, usability is one of the essential factors in mobile application development to determine the level of the application’s user experience. In this paper, we advocate for a user experience improvement by using the mental model and A/B testing. The mental model is used to reflect the user’s inner thinking mode. A comparative approach was used to investigate the performance of 20 high-grade students with homogenous backgrounds and coursework. User experience level was measured based on the usability approach on pragmatic quality and hedonic quality like effectiveness (success rate of task completion), efficiency (task completion time) and satisfaction. The results then compared with an existing Japanese m-learning to gather the insight of improvement of our proposed method. Experimental results show that both m-learning versions proved can enhance learner performance in pragmatic attributes. Nevertheless, the study also reveals that an m-learning that employs the conversational mental model in the learning process is more valued by participants in hedonic qualities. Mean that the proposed m-learning which is developed with the mental model consideration and designed using A/B testing is able to provide conversational learning experience intuitively

An effective approach to develop location-based augmented reality information support

Using location-based augmented reality (AR) for pedestrian navigation can greatly improve user action to reduce the travel time. Pedestrian navigation differs in many ways from the conventional navigation system used in a car or other vehicles. A major issue with using location-based AR for navigation to a specific landmark is their quality of usability, especially if the active screen is overcrowded with the augmented POI markers which were overlap each other at the same time. This paper describes the user journey map approach that led to new insights about how users were using location-based AR for navigation. These insights led to a deep understanding of challenges that user must face when using location-based AR application for pedestrian navigation purpose, and more generally, they helped the development team to appreciate the variety of user experience in software requirement specification phase. To prove our concept, a prototype of intuitive location-based AR was built to be compared with existing standard-location based AR. The user evaluation results reveal that the overall functional requirements which are gathered from user journey have same level of success rate criteria when compared with standard location-based AR. Nevertheless, the field study participants highlighted the extended features in our prototype could significantly enhance the user action on locating the right object in particular place when compared with standard location-based AR application (proved with the required time)

Comparative study of user experience on mobile pedestrian navigation between digital map interface and location-based augmented reality

Fast-paced mobile technology development has permitted augmented reality experiences to be delivered on mobile pedestrian navigation context. The fact that the more prevalent of this technology commonly will substituting the digital map visualization to present the geo-location information is still debatable. This paper comprises a report on a field study comparing about user experience when interacting with different modes of mobile electronic assistance in the context of pedestrian navigation interfaces which utilize location-based augmented reality (AR) and two-dimensional digital map to visualize the points of interest (POIs) location in the vicinity of the user. The study was conducted with two subsequent experiments in the Zhongli District, Taoyuan City, Taiwan. The study involved 10 participants aged between 22 and 28 years with different experiences in using smartphones and navigation systems. Navigation performance was measured based on a usability approach on pragmatic quality and hedonic quality like effectiveness (success rate of task completion), efficiency (task completion time) and satisfaction in real outdoor conditions. The evaluation findings have been cross-checked with the user’s personal comments. We aim at eliciting knowledge about user requirements related to mobile pedestrian interfaces and evaluating user experience from pragmatic and hedonic viewpoints. Results show that in the context of pedestrian navigation, digital map interfaces lead to significantly better navigation performance in pragmatic attributes in comparison to AR interfaces. Nevertheless, the study also reveals that location-based AR is more valued by participants in hedonic qualities and overall performance

Pengembangan Aplikasi Mobile Augmented Reality untuk Mendukung Pengenalan Koleksi Museum

Museum merupakan tempat yang didalamnya terdapat benda-benda warisan budaya yang dapat digunakan untuk menambah wawasan dan pengetahuan terkait sejarah di masa lalu. Namun pada kenyataannya, banyak benda bersejarah di museum yang rusak akibat dari kelalaian pengunjung dan pihak pengelola museum. Augmented Reality (AR) merupakan  teknologi yang berkembang dan sangat diminati saat ini sehingga menawarkan peluang baru sebagai media alternative pengenalan benda-benda di museum. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengimplementasikan teknologi AR untuk mengenalkan benda-benda museum sehingga terlihat interaktif bagi pengunjung serta dapat mengurangi resiko kerusakan benda di museum. Dengan dikembangkannya aplikasi ini, diharapkan mampu meminmalisir jumlah benda-benda yang rusak karena kelalaian pengunjung serta dengan adanya sistem yang interaktif dapat meningkatkan minat masyarakat untuk mengunjungi musium sebagai salah satu tempat untuk mengenal dan menambah informasi terkait warisan budaya dan sejarah. Aplikasi ini dikembangkan dengan mengadopsi Agile proses untuk lebih mudah mengakomodasi perubahan. Hasil pengujian fungsionalitas setelah aplikasi diimplementasikan menunjukan bahwa semua kebutuhan fungsional telah terpenuhi oleh sistem dan dapat digunakan sesuai dengan kebutuhan. Hasil pengujian juga menunjukkan bahwa semua fitur aplikasi dapat dijalankan dengan baik di berbagai versi platform Android. Hasil dari pengujian usabilitas aplikasi dengan memberikan kuesioner System Usability Scale (SUS) kepada pengunjung museum dan staf museum, menunjukkan angka kepuasan pengunjung sebesar 86%. Dari nilai tersebut dapat disimpulkan bahwa aplikasi ini dapat dengan mudah digunakan untuk membantu pengenalan benda koleksi museum.    Abstract Museum is a place that contain various objects of cultural heritage that can lead to gain new insight and knowledge for young generations. However, there are many cases that many museum’s objects are damaged by museum visitors. Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that offer new possibilities as an alternative media to display museum collections to visitors. This work aim to develop an augmented reality application to introduce museum collections in more interesting ways for visitors and also to mitigate the risk about damaged museum collections by careless visitors. This application was developed using Agile software development process. Functional testing of proposed application shows that all functional requirements have been met by the system. Additionally, testing results indicate that all application features can be well executed in various version of Android. The result of usability testing by giving questionnaires of System Usability Scale (SUS) to the respondents of museum visitors and museum staf, obtaining visitor satisfaction result gets 86% of museum staf satisfaction toward application. From these values can be concluded that this application can help the introduction of museum objects to museum visitors. Compatibility testing indicates that the work validity of these features can be well executed

An idea of intuitive mobile diopter calculator for myopia patient

The diopter is the unit of measurement for the refractive power of a lens. Myopia is a form of refractive error which is a leading cause of visual disability throughout the world. The prevailing treatment of refractive errors which are commonly used in daily life are glasses and contact lenses. Although those methods can overcome myopia, many myopia patients still don’t really know how to measure their current refractive error in diopter. This condition may retard the progression of refractive treatment in the myopic individual. The common methods to measure refractive error are phoropter with Snellen chart and retinoscopy, but those expensive tools need expertise to operate. This paper presents the concept of measure the face to smartphone screen distance to provide the possibility to implement a mobile application as a low-cost alternative refractive measurement tool. The main objective is to investigate the feasibility of mobile application to help patients with myopia measuring their blur line distances and evaluate their diopter levels independently. The experimental results reveal that, with 80.5 usability score the overall functionality of proposed application can be categorized as usable to users and feasible for future implementation

A new perspective of refractive error calculation with mobile application

In many situations, not standardized and limited access to eye health care in several regions of Indonesia becomes the main challenge for myopia patients to measure and monitor their current refractive error condition. Many apps were proposed to provide low-cost alternative measurement tools rather than expensive tools such as Phoropter with Snellen chart and Retinoscopy, but still, those apps need an Internet connection and manually complex steps to operate. These conditions make myopia patients reluctant to use this kind of service. In this regard, we propose an intuitive diopter level measurement app based on mobile application setup, which implements the concept of measure the user face to smartphone screen distance for the rapid diopter calculation processes and at the same time provides a low-cost alternative refractive measurement tool. This paper highlights our experiences when developing a mobile application that can help patients with myopia measuring their blur line distances and evaluate their diopter levels independently. We conduct a number of human trials with the device on a controlled environment to demonstrate the ability of the proposed app to measure the diopter level. The experimental results show that the proposed app is quite successful in measuring the diopter level of myopia patients with a relatively small range of calculation errors compared to optometrist measurement results

Location-Based Augmented Reality Information for Bus Route Planning System

Bus Route Planner applications will unfold their full potential when bus passengers are enabled to get information about the shortest path route, make a travel plan and get the correct buses in order to reduce the travel time. However, all these information are provided in text based and map view. It is difficult to understand them for the person who does not know place in the map. This paper describes the android base application of Augmented Reality (AR) that has feature to support the action of a bus user in an innovative and dynamic ways by putting additional information layer on smart phone camera screen and give the instruction assistant that leading the user way to the nearest bus stop. The experimental results show that, the overall functional of proposed application can be run well in various type of Android smart phone. When compared with similar bus traveling applications, the proposed application works more efficient

Pembangunan Aplikasi Virtual Reality Tur Perumahan Pada Balimbingan Permai Regency (PT. Karya Propertindo Utama)

Pandemi COVID 19 membuat industri pada sektor properti dan perumahan mengalamani tekanan yang besar. Salah satu perusahaan yang bergerak dibidang property adalah PT. Karya Propertindo Utama dengan produk Perumahan Balimbingan Permai. Permasalahan yang dialami Balimbingan Permai adalah dari data penjualan tahunan terdapat peningkatan jumlah batal beli rumah yang signifikan dimana pembeli yang tertarik untuk membeli tidak dapat melakukan survey lokasi secara langsung dikarenakan terbatasnya akses ke lokasi perumahan akibat kondisi pandemi. Berdasarkan permasalahan tersebut maka dikembangkan sebuah aplikasi tur interaktif berbasis virtual reality untuk perumahan Balimbingan Permai. Penelitian ini mengusulkan sebuah aplikasi yang fitur utamanya adalah untuk mengelola dan menampilkan semua katalog jenis dan detail dari unit rumah dengan teknologi Virtual Reality sehingga bisa digunakan sebagai solusi alternatif bagi calon pembeli yang tidak bisa melakukan survey lokasi dengan keterbatasn waktu maupun jarak. Hasil pengujian usability menggunakan SUPR-Qm yang dilakukan kepada 5 responden didapatkan hasil bahwa untuk aplikasi pengguna didapatkan skor nilai 82% (excellent). Aplikasi untuk admin mendapatkan nilai usability sebesar 91,3% (best imaginable) yang berarti bahwa aplikasi dapat dengan baik berjalan dan mudah dipahami oleh pengguna. Pengujian compatibility menunjukkan bahwa aplikasi dapat dijalankan pada sistem operasi Android dengan versi 6.0 sampai dengan 11 sehingga dapat mengakomodasi hampir semua skenario pada perangkat Android yang digunakan pengguna. AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has put the industry in the property and housing sectors under great pressure. One of the companies engaged in property is PT. Karya Propertindo Utama with Balimbingan Permai Regency products. The problem experienced by Balimbingan Permai is that from annual sales data there is a significant increase in the number of canceled house purchases where buyers who are interested in buying cannot conduct site surveys directly due to limited access to housing locations due to pandemic conditions. Based on these problems, an interactive virtual reality-based tour application for Balimbingan Permai housing was developed. The main feature of the proposed app is to manage and display all types and details of the house unit catalog in Virtual Reality so that it can be used as an alternative solution for prospective buyers who cannot conduct direct site surveys due to limited time and distance issue. The usability testing results on a total of 20 respondents showed that the application for users received a usability value response of 82%, which was included in the excellent category. The admin side application gets a usability value of 91.3% which falls into a Best Imaginable adjective rating which means that users can accept the application. Compatibility testing shows that the application can run properly when accommodating almost all usage scenarios on Android versions 6.0 to 9.

Pembangunan Aplikasi Manajemen Penyiraman Rumput Taman Playground Berbasis Internet of Things

BUMDESMA Kecamatan Ngantang adalah Badan Usaha Milik Desa Bersama yang ada di Kecamatan Ngantang. Instansi ini adalah instansi baru yang memiliki usaha berupa playground. Dari awal pembukaan playground hingga terakhir yaitu bulan Juli 2019 pemasukan playground mengalami penurunan dikarenakan rusaknya rumput taman selama musim kemarau. Permasalahan yang dialami BUMDESMA adalah pemeliharaan rumput gajah mini untuk taman memerlukan metode penyiraman khusus namun BUMDESMA belum mampu menggunakan jasa penyiraman untuk menyiram taman playground. Dari permasalahan tersebut maka dikembangkan sistem penyiraman taman berbasis Internet of Things (IOT) untuk menekan biaya pengeluaran BUMDESMA. Sistem manajemen penyiraman taman menggunakan aplikasi yang ditanamkan pada perangkat Android untuk mengontrol sistem yang dibuat dan perangkat embedded untuk melakukan mekanisme penyiraman. Hasil pengujian blackbox menunjukan bahwa hasil uji 100% valid. Pengujian usability menunjukan nilai lebih dari kriteria minimum penelitian dengan nilai 72 yang berarti bahwa aplikasi dapat diterima oleh pengguna. Dari hasil pengujian efisiensi biaya menunjukan bahwa penggunaan sistem penyiraman dalam jangka panjang dapat mengurangi biaya pengeluaranan BUMDESMA dibanding penggunaan jasa penyiraman profesional. AbstractBUMDESMA Kecamatan Ngantang is a Joint Village-Owned Enterprises located in Ngantang District, Malang, East Java. This is a new agency that has a playground as one of the core businesses. Along from the beginning of the playground operates until the end of July 2019, playground revenue has gradually decreased. This issue arises due to the bad condition of the grass on the playground causing local people are not willing to visit that place. The playground's grass requires special watering treatment but BUMDESMA is the lack of income so they cannot afford to pay the professional grass maintenance services to actively watering the playground grass. From these problems, We proposed an IOT based garden watering system to reduce BUMDESMA expenditure costs. The garden watering management system uses a mobile application as a user interface to control the system and embedded devices for the watering mechanism. Blackbox testing of the proposed system shows that all the functional requirements are 100% valid. Usability testing shows a value of 72 which is more than the minimum threshold of usability criterion means that the application is acceptable to users. The results of cost-efficiency testing show that the proposed water systems can reduce the cost when compared to using professional watering services

Usability improvement of public transit application through mental model and user journey

Using a mobile application that is featured with local public transit information can greatly improve user action, as well as assisting travelers to have a better experience while taking public transit services. Crowd environment inside a public transit is one of the most frequent causes that lead difficulties to passengers when they engaging their mobile devices to access their apps or in some conditions. Finding crucial information such as stops points and remaining time to interchanges point when switching to another line becomes more difficult in those conditions especially for foreigners who new in a particular region. This study presents the combination of a mental model and a usability approach to construct a user journey map that led to new insights on user's experiences and challenges when utilizing their mobile local transit application. This valuable information is a part of the elicitation process to propose an alternative interaction method to enhance the usability and travel experience of the public transit app. The experimental results indicate that in contrast to the existing mobile transit app, the proposed interface with the utilization of a wearable device could considerably enhance user action when trying to reach the desired location in terms of total time and performance. It implies that the proposed solution, which works through the mental model and user journey is able to intuitively enhance the public transit app usability