HMD versus PDA: A comparative study of the user out-of-box experience

The out-of-box experience (OOBE) has been identified as a significant factor contributing to user perception and acceptance of products and technologies. Whilst there has been considerable emphasis placed on formalising methodological procedures for evaluating the OOBE and on the creation of positive user experiences through appropriate interfaces and applications, relatively little work has been undertaken examining how the OOBE is impacted when the experience itself covers a range of (possibly interconnected) devices. In this paper we report the results of an empirical study which examined the OOBE when a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and Head Mounted Device (HMD) were configured and then connected for inter-operability purposes. Our findings show that type of device has a considerable impact on the OOBE, with the ask of interconnecting devices having a detrimental effect on the OOBE. The OOBE, however, is in main unaffected by user type and gender

Device and context influence on wireless infotainment access: A real world story

Copyright @ 2005 CEPISUser considerations are paramount when it comes to take up of technologies, and even more so in the case of mobile devices, in which the success of a particular device often depends on its novelty appeal. However, relatively little work has been undertaken exploring how day-to-day tasks are affected when mediated by such access devices. This paper reports the results of an empirical study placed in a 'real-world' setting, in which participants undertook typical infotainment - combined information and entertainment access tasks on three different wireless-enabled mobile devices. These were a laptop, a Personal Digital Assistant and a Head Mounted Display device. Our results show that, with the exception of participants' level of self-consciousness when using such devices in public environments, the user wireless infotainment access experience is generally unaffected by device type. Location was shown, though, to be a significant factor when users engage in tasks such as listening to online music or navigation

Visualizing pain data for wheelchair users: A ubiquitous approach

Copyright @ 2005 Rinton PressWe describe a wireless enabled solution for the vizualisation of pain data. Our approach uses pain drawings to record spatial location and type of pain and enables data collection with appropriate time stamping, thus providing a means for the seldom-recorded (but often attested) time-varying nature of pain, with consequential impact on monitoring the effectiveness of patient treatment regimes. Moreover, since the implementation platform of our solution is that of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), data collection takes place ubiquitously, providing back pain sufferers with mobility problems (such as wheelchair users) with a convenient means of logging their pain data and of seamlessly uploading it to a hospital server using WiFi technology. Stakeholder results show that, notwithstanding problems related to PDA data input, our approach is generally perceived to be an easy to use and convenient solution to the challenges of anywhere/anytime data collection

Recording of time-varying back-pain data: A wireless solution

Chronic back pain is a debilitating experience for a considerable proportion of the adult population, with a significant impact on countries’ economies and health systems. While there has been increasing anecdotal evidence to support the fact that for certain categories of patients (such as wheelchair users), the back pain experienced is dynamically varying with time, there is a relative scarcity of data to support and document this observation, with consequential impact upon such patients’ treatment and care. Part of the reason behind this state of affairs is the relative difficulty in gathering pain measurements at precisely defined moments in time. In this paper,we describe a wireless-enabled solution that collects both questionnaire and diagrammatic, visual-based data, via a pain drawing, which overcomes such limitations, enabling seamless data collection and its upload to a hospital server using existing wireless fidelity technology. Results show that it is generally perceived to be an easy-to-use and convenient solution to the challenges of anywhere/anytime data collection

Integrating perceptual, device and location characteristics for wireless multimedia transmission

In this paper,we describe an investigation exploring user experiences of accessing streamed multimedia content, when that content is tailored according to perceptual, device and location characteristics. To this end, we have created pre-defined transmission profiles and stream perceptually tailored multimedia content to three different locations, each characterised by different infotainment requirements. In the light of our results, we propose that multimedia transmission to mobile and wireless devices should be made based on pre-defined profiles, which contains a combination of static (perceptual, device type, CPU speed, and display specifications) and dynamic information (streamed content type location of the device/user, context of the device/user). The evaluation of such a system showed that the users and service providers can gain from such an approach considerably, as user perceptions of quality were not detrimentally affected by QoS degradations. Consequently, service providers can utilise this information to effectively manage local network traffic and bandwidth

3-D pain drawings-mobile data collection using a PDA

A large number of the adult population suffers from some kind of back pain during their lifetime. Part of the process of diagnosing and treating such back pain is for a clinician to collect information as to the type and location of the pain that is being suffered.Traditional approaches to gathering and visualizing this pain data have relied on simple 2-D representations of the human body, where different types of sensation are recorded with various monochrome symbols. Although patients have been shown to prefer such drawings to traditional questionnaires, these pain drawings can be limited in their ability to accurately record pain. The work described in this paper proposes an alternative that uses a 3-D representation of the human body, which can be marked in color to visualize and record the pain data. This study has shown that the new approach is a promising development in this area of medical practice and has been positively received by patients and clinicians alike

A Jini-Based Solution for Electronic Prescriptions

In most countries today, handwritten, paper-based medical prescriptions are the norm.While efforts have been made in the past and are being made at present to migrate toward electronic dispensation of prescriptions, these have generally omitted to incorporate ubiquitous computing technology in their proposed solutions. In this paper, we focus on this issue and describe a Jini-based prototypical solution for electronic prescriptions, which allows for their wireless transmission to in-range pharmacies and the augmentation of the service levels rendered to the user, with, for instance, information about queue lengths and estimated waiting times being provided to the patients. Clinical and user evaluation revealed that there were high levels of agreement as regards the prototype’s effectiveness, ease of use, and usefulness

Location based mobile computing - a tuplespace perspective

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2006 IOS PressLocation based or "context aware" computing is becoming increasingly recognized as a vital part of a mobile computing environment. As a consequence, the need for location-management middleware is widely recognized and actively researched. Location-management is frequently offered to the application through a "location API" (e.g. JSR 179) where the mobile unit can find out its own location as coordinates or as "building, floor, room" values. It is then up to the application to map the coordinates into a set of localized variables, e.g. direction to the nearest bookshop or the local timezone. It is the opinion of the authors that a localization API should be more transparent and more integrated: The localized values should be handed to the application directly, and the API for doing so should be the same as the general storage mechanisms. Our proposed middleware for location and context management is built on top of Mobispace. Mobispace is a distributed tuplespace made for mobile units (J2me) where replication between local replicas takes place with a central server (over GPRS) or with other mobile units (using Bluetooth). Since a Bluetooth connection indicates physical proximity to another node, a set of stationary nodes may distribute locality information over Bluetooth connections, and this information may be retrieved through the ordinary tuplespace API. Besides the integration with the general framework for communication and coordination the middleware offers straightforward answers to questions like: Where is node X located? Which nodes are near me? What is the trace of node Y

Mobile information access in the real world: A story of three wireless devices

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2008 ElsevierThe importance of the user perspective to the wireless information access experience cannot be understated: simply put, users will not indulge in devices that are perceived to be difficult to use and in technologies that do not offer quality infotainment – combined information and entertainment – content. In this paper, we investigate the impact that mobile devices have on the user wireless infotainment access experience in practice. To this end, we have undertaken an empirical study placed in a ‘real-world’ setting, in which participants undertook typical infotainment access tasks on three different wireless-enabled mobile devices: a laptop, a personal digital assistant and a head mounted display device. Results show that, with the exception of participants’ level of self-consciousness when using such devices in public environments, the user wireless information access experience is generally unaffected by device type. Location was shown, though, to be a significant factor when users engage in tasks such as listening to online music or navigation. Whilst the interaction between device and environment was found to influence entertainment-related tasks in our experiments, the informational ones were not affected. However, the interaction effects between device and user type was found to affect both types of tasks. Lastly, a user’s particular computing experience was shown to influence the perceived ease of wireless information access only in the case of online searching, irrespective of whether this is done for primarily informational purposes or entertainment ones

A mobile visual diary for personal pain management

Back-pain is one of the most prolific health problems within the population and costs industry lost revenue due to the amount of days people have to take off in order to recover. In this paper, we have targeted this problem and suggested a mobile app for visually diarizing the pain experience of patients. The Android platform is utilized and its technology stack forms the basis for this 3D centric application. Positive evaluations obtained provide evidence of the promising nature of the approach and indicate several future directions of research within mobile pain management