Usability Study

This paper investigates the value of eye tracking in evaluating the usability of a Learning Management System, at an open distance learning university where the users’ computer and Web skills vary significantly. Eye tracking utilize the users’ eye movements, while doing a task, to provide information about the nature, sequence and timing of the cognitive operations that took place. This information supplements, but does not replace standard usability testing with observations. This forces the questions of when the added value of eye tracking justifies the added cost and resources. Existing research has indicated significant differences in the usability experienced by experts and non-experts on the same system. The aim of this paper is to go one step further and shed light on the type and severity of the usability problems experienced by non-expert users. Usability testing with eye tracking is a resource intensive method but our findings indicate that eye tracking adds concise, summarised evidence of usability problems that justifies the cost when testing special groups such as users deficient in Web and computer skills. The contribution of this paper is to highlight the added value of eye tracking as a usability evaluation method in working with Web non-expert users. Furthermore, the findings improve our understanding of the knowledge differences between expert and non-expert Web users and the practical challenges involved in working with non-expert users.

Page 1. An Experimental Usability Study for Augmented Reality Technologies in the Tourist Sector Aurkene Alzua-Sorzabaf Maria Teresa Linaza'' Marina Abad' " Faculty of Humanities, San Sebastian Campus Deusto University ...

This paper focuses on fiction electronic books and their usability. Two complementary studies were drawn together in order to investigate whether fiction e-books can successfully become part of peoples reading habits: the Visual Book project, which found that electronic texts which closely resemble their paper counterparts in terms of visual components such as size, quality and design were received positively by users, and the EBONI Project which aimed to define a set of best practice guidelines for designing electronic textbooks. It was found that the general guidelines for the design of textbooks on the Internet that have been proposed by the EBONI project can also be applied to the design of fiction e-books. Finally, in terms of the electronic production of fiction e-books, this study suggests that concentrating on the appearance of text, rather than the technology itself, can lead to better quality publications to rival the print version of fiction books.

The issue of study in emotion or affect has been recently examined by Human-computer Interaction (HCI) research groups, in particular for the development of affective interaction and design. With the recent technological advances, humans are able to interact with computers in ways which are almost impossible. The new modalities for computer interaction with human emotion such skin conductivity, heart rate, brain signals and physiological signals are emerging, which extend beyond the confines of the keyboard and mouse. As such, emotion plays an important role in human-to-human communication and interaction, which allows people to express it beyond the verbal domain. The physiological signals, which are the focus of this study, play a significant method for usability study in HCI. Numbers of usability psychometrics are developed, however, a few yield “natural” interpretations, such as feelings. The physiological signals can be interpreted as a trustworthy of emotional reveal. In this study, we conduct an affective interaction and design development for an e-Learning storyboard tool called SCOUT. The paper describes the significant role of physiological signals as a method to study usability in emotion in the area of HCI and Affective Computing. Affective design and interaction are also discussed in the SCOUT development. The comparison of different research areas in HCI, focusing on different key attributes and physiological signals are studied. The result of the analysis revealed that physiological signal should be used as important as other usability psychometric in HCI, to enrich the evaluation of human-computer interaction study with human emotion.

One of the main problems of standards in the context of usability of software qua- lity is, that they can not be measured in product features. We present a new appro- ach to measure user-interface quality in a quantitative way. First, we developed a concept to describe user-interfaces on a granularity level, that is detailed enough to preserve important interface characteristics, and is general enough to cover most of known interface types. We distinguish between different types of 'inter- action-points'. With these kinds of interaction-points we can describe several types of interfaces (CUI: command, menu, form-fill-in; GUI: desktop, direct manipulation, multimedia, etc.). We carried out two different comparative usa- bility studies to validate our quantitative measures. The results of one other pub- lished comparative usability study can be predicted. Results of six different inter- faces are presented and discussed.

Game-based training offers great potential for providing low-cost training systems for learning cognitive and procedural skills within the U.S. Navy. We introduce an effort, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, to harness, apply and harden this capability by creating validated training games for the Navy. Over the period of fourteen months, our multi-disciplinary team collaborated to develop and validate a flooding control training game to help students at the U.S. Navy Recruit Training Command (RTC) learn to be better sailors. The Flooding Control Trainer (FCT) provides individual training within the simulated interior of an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer. The trainer reinforces damage control skills that the recruits have been exposed to in lectures, but which they have not had a chance to practice in context. In developing the trainer, we focused on both the specific application domain as well as the design methods required to ensure that the trainer was based on relevant le...

This paper argues that in rural settings of post-war societies libraries can work as vital sources of empowerment of women. The paper begins by stressing the  impact of war on ethnic Albanian women in Kosovo. Women have limited access to health care, education and employment opportunities. Rape victims are  stigmatized and ostracized by communities. The paper maintains by an analysis of causes of  information deficiency in the post-war Kosovo to stress how and why rural libraries remain the only free sources of education for a community. As sources of information outside the traditional clan and family structures libraries function as the core sources of information literacy in the communities. The paper concludes with  development of  practical suggestions on how investing in rural library development can lead to women empowerment.