Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

Use and effect of motivational elements in user instructions: What we do and don't know

Literature shows that there are two views on how user instructions should stimulate the users’ motivation to read the instructions to be able to work with the accompanying device, system or program. Advocates of the first view state that users will be motivated by correct instructions that enable them to perform tasks effectively and efficiently. Promoters of the second view think that facilitating correct task performance is not enough to motivate users. They consider it a function of user instructions to facilitate positive experiences while performing tasks, and they expect that adding motivational elements would be beneficial. We conducted four studies to investigate the effects of motivational elements in user instructions. These studies were based on the ARCS model, which provides strategies focusing on four objectives – Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction – to make instructions motivational. We measured the effects of motivational elements focusing on those objectives, on usability and on the users’ motivation and confidence. We particularly studied elements that were expected to promote confidence (e.g. personal stories). In general, the results of the studies show that confidence-enhancing elements positively affect the effectiveness of task performance and users’ persistence in trying to complete a task

Paragraphs or Lists? The Effects of Text Structure on Web Sites

This paper describes a study that we conducted to investigate the effects of the visual text structure on Web sites on the users' browsing behavior and on their appreciation for the Web site. It has been known for a long time that the visual structure of a text has considerable effects on reading behavior, but surprisingly little research has been done to define guidelines for the structure of texts on Web sites. We compared two versions of a Web site, one version contained text structured using paragraphs, the other version contained mainly text structured as numbered lists. Over 300 participants browsed one version of the site, and answered a survey about the content of the Web site and about their appreciation for the site. The results show that participants who used a Web site with text structured as lists performed better than participants who used a Web site with text structured using paragraphs: they visited more Web pages and they appreciated the site better

Textual motivational elements in cell phone user instructions

For a long time, user instructions were considered as purely instrumental documents: Instructions had to enable readers to perform tasks with an accompanying device. And even though this still remains the main purpose of user instructions, views on how to accomplish this have changed over the years. The traditional view seemed to assume that when the instructions were correct, readers would automatically be able to use the accompanying device well (Moore, 1997). According to current views, the instructions should motivate readers to keep on reading once they have started doing so (Horton, 1997). This new approach to technical communication is being adopted by a vastly growing group of practitioners in the field, but relatively little research has been conducted so far to test for the effects of this approach. We executed a number of studies to test for the effects of motivational elements in user instructions (Loorbach, Karreman, & Steehouder, 2007, 2009). This short paper is a summary of our most recent study