Notes to a Research Agenda for Geopolitical Issues in HCI

The HCI field lacks a systematic research agenda to address the planetary level of HCI issues associated with geopolitical conflicts. This paper proposes such a research agenda. It introduces and motivates geopolitical HCI as a research issue, and then analyses three possible topics and their related subtopics for future research. In the conclusion these are presented in a table overview that allows for easy future adding to the dimensions and content of the agend

HOW DO WEBMASTERS EXPLAIN WEBSITE QUALITY?

This paper investigates how webmasters in first prize winning companies of web awards explain website quality. In order to gain insights into website quality descriptions, we held qualitative interviews with webmasters in eight Norwegian companies. The outcome is grounded theory models of how webmasters representing four ideal types of websites explain website quality. By using the left side of the DeLone and McLean IS Success Model which captures information quality, system quality and service quality, this paper discusses the webmasters’ explanations of website quality. The aim is to shed light on the diversity of explanations that webmasters may have, and to explore the potential of the webmaster perspective on website quality. The results show that webmasters explain website quality differently, depending on the type of website, with user friendliness being a repeated key word. Information quality is assessed at different levels, as are the types of services provided for users. Although webmasters seems to have users’ interests in mind, user-satisfaction requirements appear to be absent from a webmaster’s perspective. The paper concludes that there is not a clearly expressed relation between the degree of investments in user driven activities in order to improve website quality and winning a national website award. A discussion of the use of quality criteria and evaluation methods for website quality is given. The paper ends with implications for practitioners and academia

A framework for thinking about the maturity of cultural usability

Interaction design and usability have become important contributors to economic and cultural development in emergent economies in today’s global distribution of the use and production of IT, but research and practice that incorporate cultural and non-western perspectives on software and interactive products are still in their infancy. This chapter presents theory of cultural cognitive styles and standard usability, and a framework for thinking about the maturity of cultural usability. The framework has five levels. Level I concerns the localization of the user interface, level II focuses on the localization of the usability evaluation methods, level III emerges with new user groups, level IV concerns historical changes in the concept of usability itself, and level V deals with managing a complexity of user groups. The chapter uses recent empirical results from studies of culture and usability to illustrate the need for the framework for thinking about the maturity of cultural usability

Theory and Examples

In this chapter, I will review current approaches to online sociability and present and exemplify a psychological theory, the Social Reality theory, of online sociability. By analyzing sociability in a virtual world based university course, I will present and analyze examples on how to understand the students’ design of the conditions for sociability as communication about cultural symbols, such as avatars and virtual landscapes, and the social reality of perceived groups of people. The analysis results will be used to illustrate different kinds of online sociability: superficial, convivial, and negative sociability. The chapter suggests solutions and recommendations to designers and researchers with a focus on online communities and networked communication

Proceedings from NordiCHI 2008 Workshop Sunday October 19, 2008

This paper raises themes that are seen as some of the challenges facing the emerging practice and research field of Human Work Interaction Design. The paper has its offset in the discussions and writings that have been dominant within the IFIP Working Group on Human Work Interaction Design (name HWID) through the last two and half years since the commencement of this Working Group. The paper thus provides an introduction to the theory and empirical evidence that lie behind the combination of empirical work studies and interaction design. It also recommends key topics for future research in Human Work Interaction Design

A comparison of what is part of usability testing in three countries

The cultural diversity of users of technology challenges our methods for usability evaluation. In this paper we report and compare three ethnographic interview studies of what is a part of a standard (typical) usability test in a company in Mumbai, Beijing and Copenhagen. At each of these three locations, we use structural and contrast questions do a taxonomic and paradigm analysis of a how a company performs a usability test. We find similar parts across the three locations. We also find different results for each location. In Mumbai, most parts of the usability test are not related to the interactive application that is tested, but to differences in user characteristics, test preparation, method, and location. In Copenhagen, considerations about the client´s needs are part of a usability test. In Beijing, the only varying factor is the communication pattern and relation to the user. These results are then contrasted in a cross cultural matrix to identify cultural themes that can help interpret results from existing laboratory research in usability test methods

Interaction design & Usability from an Indian perspective - Talks with: Apala Chavan, Anirudha Joshi, Dinesh Katre, Devashish Pandya, Sammeer Chabukswar, Pradeep Yammiyavar

This is a collection of talks on usability and culture with prominent researchers and practitioners on the Indian interaction design and usability scene: Apala Chavan, Anirudha Joshi, Dinesh Katre, Devashish Pandya, Sammeer Chabukswar, and Pradeep Yammiyavar. I did these talks because for several years I have been the coordinator of a cross cultural research project in India, China and Denmark that aims at investigating the impact of culture on the results of established methods of usability testing. During these years I gradually have come to realize the need for letting the prominent researchers and practitioners in the Indian software industry and university world speak about the big questions in the field. Without this grand context, it is in fact impossible to understand what research experiments will tell us about interaction design and usability in India and abroad. Therefore I first give an introduction to cultural usability and then present the six talks

VIDEN OG KOMPETENCE I AKADEMISK ARBEJDE:: En undersøgelse af ingeniørers brug af faglig basal viden ved løsning af industrielle problemer.

I artiklen diskuteres mulighederne for kognitionspsykologiske undersøgelser af akademisk kompetence og brugen af faglig basal viden i praktisk problemløsning. Der drages en analogi mellem medicinsk og ingeniørmæssig problemløsning. Et case-gengivelses paradigme udviklet i studier af medicinsk ekspertise (Patel og Groen, 1986; Boshuizen og Schmidt, 1992) præsenteres som en metode til at studere fem ingeniørers første bestemmelse af problemer i et industrielt anlæg. Udsagnsanalyse viser ekspertise-effekter ved genkaldelse af case-materialet og ved brug af basal reguleringsteoretisk og –teknisk viden. Disse resultater peger på, at den anvendte metode er robust og giver resultater, der er sammenligneligeIn this paper we discuss the possibilities for cognitive psychological investigations of academic competence and use of basic scientific knowledge in practical problem solving. An analogy is drawn between medical and engineering problem solving. A case-representation paradigm developed in studies of medical expertise (Patel & Groen, 1986; Boshuizen & Schmidt, 1992) is adapted as a method for examining five engineers initial representation of problems in an industrial production plant. Propositional analysis shows expertise effects in recall of case material and use of basic process control knowledge. These results suggest that the method is robust and produce results that are comparable with investigations of medical problem solving

Relation in UX Models

This paper argues that the conceptualization of the human, the computer and the domain of use in competing lines of UX research have problematic similarities and superficial differences. The paper qualitatively analyses concepts and models in five research papers that together represent two influential lines of UX research: aesthetics and temporal UX, and two use situations: using a website and starting to use a smartphone. The results suggest that the two lines of UX research share a focus on users’ evaluative judgments of technology, both focuses on product qualities rather than activity domains, give little details about users, and treat human-computer interaction as perception. The conclusion gives similarities and differences between the approaches to UX. The implications for theory building are indicated

Four Principles for Selecting HCI Research Questions

In this position paper, I present and explain the position that what we should study in HCI depends on the objective of the research and its political, social, cultural, technological, and historical context. I outline four principles for selecting research questions and give a personal account of how I have selected research questions using these four principles. The aim with the paper is to generate discussion and advance the understanding of what to study in HCI