Smartphone-Based Therapeutic Exercises for Men Affected by Premature Ejaculation: A Pilot Study

Introduction: Smartphone-delivered healthcare interventions allow patients to access services on demand when needed, improving motivation and compliance. However, the use of mobile health apps has been scarcely explored in sexual medicine. Aim: To evaluate the effects of integrating psychological treatment for premature ejaculation (PE) with a mobile coaching app that offers therapeutic exercises on the patient's smartphone. Methods: This study comprised 35 heterosexual men with primary psychogenic PE (mean age 34 years, standard deviation = 9.15). All patients entered a cycle of 15 sessions of psychodynamic psychotherapy integrating behavioral therapy, each lasting about 45 minutes. The patients were randomly assigned to 2 groups, each of which performed daily homework exercises (physiotherapy exercises for reinforcing the pelvic floor muscles and cognitive exercises for distancing from sexual failure.) The first group (15 patients) received verbal and printed instructions only (treatment as usual\u2014TAU), whereas the second group (17 patients) experienced the exercises with guidance from the mobile app (app). In both groups, the exercises started after the seventh session. Patients were advised to perform the exercises 3 times a day for 3 months. Main Outcome Measures: The primary outcome measures were the Premature Ejaculation Diagnostic Tool and the Premature Ejaculation Profile. Results: Analysis of the data revealed significant pre-post improvements in Premature Ejaculation Diagnostic Tool and Premature Ejaculation Profile scores for the app group compared with those of the TAU group (P <.01). The frequency of patients with no-PE condition for the app group after treatment was significantly higher than the frequency of patients with no-PE condition for the TAU group (P <.001). Conclusion: Results suggest that a mobile coaching app performs better than TAU in improving both the behavioral skills of ejaculatory delay and sexual self-confidence within a psychological treatment for PE. Future studies should collect follow-up data and explore the potential of mobile coaching apps in combined pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy interventions. Optale G, Burigat S, Chittaro L. et al. Smartphone-Based Therapeutic Exercises for Men Affected by Premature Ejaculation: A Pilot Study. J Sex Med 2020;XX:XXX\u2013XXX

The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-byadaptation, involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience. The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation

Augmenting Audio Messages with Visual Directions in Mobile Guides: an Evaluation of Three Approaches

Supporting users\u2019 navigation is a fundamental feature of mobile guides. This paper presents an experimental evaluation comparing three different ways of providing navigation guidance by combining visual and audio directions during guided city tours. The three considered solutions differ in the way audio directions are augmented with visual directions: a traditional map-based solution, a combination of a map and photographs of the area, a combination of large arrows and photographs. The results of our evaluation show that when the map is combined with photographs that clearly indicate the direction to the user or when the map is replaced by a combination of directional arrows and photographs, users\u2019 performance is significantly better. Moreover, the combination of map and photographs was highly preferred by users

3D Location-pointing as a Navigation Aid in Virtual Environments

The navigation support provided by user interfaces of Virtual Environments (VEs) is often inadequate and tends to be overly complex, especially in the case of large-scale VEs. In this paper, we propose a novel navigation aid that aims at allowing users to easily locate objects and places inside large-scale VEs. The aid exploits 3D arrows to point towards the objects and places the user is interested in. We illustrate and discuss the experimental evaluation we carried out to assess the usefulness of the proposed solution, contrasting it with more traditional 2D navigation aids. In particular, we compared subjects\u2019 performance in 4 conditions which differ for the type of provided navigation aid: three conditions employed respectively the proposed \u201c3D arrows\u201d aid, an aid based on 2D arrows, and a 2D aid based on a radar metaphor; the fourth condition was a control condition with no navigation aids available

Location-aware Visualization of VRML Models in GPS-based Mobile Guides

In this paper, we present LAMP3D, a system for the locationaware presentation of VRML content on mobile devices. We explore the application of LAMP3D in tourist mobile guides: the system is used to provide tourists with a 3D visualization of the environment they are exploring, synchronized with the physical world through the use of GPS data; tourists can easily obtain information on the objects they see in the real world by directly selecting them in the VRML world. We discuss the design and development of the system and report about the feedback obtained from the informal user testing we carried out

Rethinking the usage and experience of clustering in web mapping

Although the notion of ‘too many markers’ have been mentioned in several research, in practice, displaying hundreds of Points of Interests (POI) on a web map in two dimensions with an acceptable usability remains a real challenge nowadays. Web practitioners often make excessive use of clustering aggregation to overcome performance bottlenecks without effectively resolving issues of perceived performance. This paper tries to bring a broad awareness by identifying a sample of experience issues which describe a general reality of clustering, and provide a pragmatic survey of potential technologies optimisations. At the end, we discuss the usage of technologies and the lack of documented client-server workflows, along with the need to enlarge our vision of the various clutter reduction methods

Navigation techniques for small-screen devices: an evaluation on maps and web pages

Several techniques have been proposed to support user navigation of large information spaces (e.g., maps or web pages) on smallscreen devices such as PDAs and Smartphones. In this paper, we present the results of an evaluation that compared three of these techniques to determine how they might affect performance and satisfaction of users. Two of the techniques are quite common on mobile devices: the first one (DoubleScrollbar) is the standard combination of two scrollbars for separate horizontal and vertical scrolling with zoom buttons to change the scale of the information space, the second one (Grab&Drag) enables users to navigate the information space by directly dragging its currently displayed portion, while zooming is handled through a slider control. The last technique (Zoom- Enhanced Navigator or ZEN) is an extension and adaptation to mobile screens of Overview&Detail approaches, which are based on displaying an overview of the information space together with a detail view of a portion of that space. In these approaches, navigation is usually supported by (i) highlighting in the overview which portion of space is displayed in the detail view, and (ii) allowing users to move the highlight within the overview area to change the corresponding portion of space in the detail area. Our experimental evaluation concerned tasks involving maps as well as web page navigation. The paper analyzes in detail the obtained results in terms of task completion times, number and duration of user interface actions, accuracy of the gained spatial knowledge, and subjective preferences