Practice and carryover effects when using small interaction devices

The use of interaction devices in modern work often challenges the human motor system, especially when these devices introduce unfamiliar transformations to the user. In this paper we evaluated expert performance and skill differences between experts and novices when using small motion- and force-controlled interaction devices (touchpad and mini-joystick) in an applied text-editing task. Firstly, experts performed better with their familiar input device than with an unfamiliar one. Particularly touchpad experts operating the unfamiliar mini-joystick showed highly asymmetric carryover costs. Results showed that the efficient performance of experts depended on domain-specific skills, which were not transferable. Secondly, with considerable practice (more than observed for simple and short tasks) novices were brought up to higher levels of performance. The motion-transformation between hand and cursor action was easier in understanding and application than the force-transformation. Thus, the touchpad was used more efficiently than the mini-joystick. In conclusion, practice effects found so far are considerably underestimated when it comes to an applied task. The results give reason to develop and implement skill-sensitive training procedures, since the acquisition of domain-specific skills is critical for expert performance. As a consequence, training procedures might be essential for complex applications and/or unfamiliar device transformations.     

A calendar based Internet content pre-caching agent for small computing devices

We described in earlier publications the principles of a system where Internet content would be pre-cached, based on contextual information obtained from a user’s electronic calendar. The model for such a system envisioned a set of cooperating agents, distributed on a user’s desktop and mobile device, which would be responsible for making decisions on the context and preferences of the user, and downloading the relevant internet content through a land-based broadband connection and storing it on the mobile device. This paper presents and discusses established pre-caching techniques and their suitability for use on mobile information access scenarios. It proceeds in describing the implementation details of an alternative approach, a calendar-based pre-caching system and presents the findings of tests that were made with human subjects on such a system.

Diagnosing diabetes using neural networks on small mobile devices

Pervasive computing is often mentioned in the context of improving healthcare. This paper presents a novel approach for diagnosing diabetes using neural networks and pervasive healthcare computing technologies. The recent developments in small mobile devices and wireless communications provide a strong motivation to develop new software techniques and mobile services for pervasive healthcare computing. A distributed end-to-end pervasive healthcare system utilizing neural network computations for diagnosing illnesses was developed. This work presents the initial results for a simple client (patient’s PDA) and server (powerful desktop PC) two-tier pervasive healthcare architecture. The computations of neural network operations on both client and server sides and wireless network communications between them are optimized for real time use of pervasive healthcare services.     

Immersive teleconference system based on human-robot-avatar interaction using head-tracking devices

This paper introduces a cost-efficient immersive teleconference system. Especially to enhance immersive interaction capability during one-to-many telecommunication, this paper concentrates on the design of a teleconference system that is composed of a set of robotic devices and web-based control/monitoring interfaces for human-robot-avatar interaction. To this end, we first propose a serverclient network model for human-machine interaction systems based on the latest HTML5 technology. As a hardware system for teleconferencing, the simplest robot is designed specially for remote users to be able to experience augmented reality naturally on live scenes. Modularized software systems are then explained in view of accessibility and functionality. This paper also describes how a human head motion is captured, synchronized with a robot in the real world, and rendered through an 3-D avatar in the augmented world for human-robot-avatar interaction. Finally, the proposed system is evaluated through a questionnaire survey that follows a series of user-experience tests.     

Adapting Web pages for small-screen devices

We propose a page-adaptation technique that splits existing Web pages into smaller, logically related units. To do this, we must first solve two technical problems: how to detect an existing Web page's semantic structure, and how to split a Web page into smaller blocks based on that structure. To date, we've implemented our technique in Web browsers for mobile devices, in a proxy server for adapting Web pages on the fly, and as an authoring tool plug-in for converting existing Web pages. The Web page can then be adapted to form a two-level hierarchy with a thumbnail representation at the top level for providing a global view and an index to a set of subpages at the bottom level for detailed information.     

Applying Web accessibility to Internet portals

Internet portals are becoming a very popular entry point to the Web. Users utilise them because of the large amount of information available. This paper aims to highlight the major hurdles disabled and/or older users encounter in Web portals, and to issue recommendations for portals layout and structure, based upon the results of a user requirements collection carried out by the authors. The findings point out that provision of a powerful search engine is essential for successful information retrieval. Moreover, due to the diverse and sometimes contradictory needs of the user groups under consideration, the customisation of information presentation plays an important role in ensuring accessibility and usability of Internet portals. The paper also includes a brief overview of the results in relation to the actual working draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

Robust estimation in very small samples

In experimental science measurements are typically repeated only a few times, yielding a sample size n of the order of 3 to 8. One then wants to summarize the measurements by a central value and measure their variability, i.e. estimate location and scale. These estimates should preferably be robust against outliers, as reflected by their small-sample breakdown value. The estimator's stylized empirical influence function should be smooth, monotone increasing for location, and decreasing–increasing for scale. It turns out that location can be estimated robustly for n3, whereas for scale n4 is needed. Several well-known robust estimators are studied for small n, yielding some surprising results. For instance, the Hodges–Lehmann estimator equals the average when n=4. Also location M-estimators with auxiliary scale are studied, addressing issues like the difference between one-step and fully iterated M-estimators. Simultaneous M-estimators of location and scale (‘Huber's Proposal 2’) are considered as well, and it turns out that their lack of robustness is already noticeable for such small samples. Recommendations are given as to which estimators to use.     

Bringing the wireless Internet to mobile devices

Effectively mapping Internet content to mobile wireless devices requires not only new technologies and standards, but also innovative solutions that minimize cost and maximize efficiency to the benefit of both content providers and consumers. The wireless Internet must deliver information to handheld device users regardless of where they are and how they are connected, and in a suitable format - a challenge complicated by the dizzying array of devices, wireless standards and applications. Transcoding and the Relational Markup Language are promising middleware solutions to the problem of bringing Internet content to the extremely diverse and dynamic mobile wireless device universe     

“网站开发与网页制作”网络课程设计

网络课程是基于网络平台能够在网上进行自主学习、研究性学习和协作学习的一种教学模式。对“网站开发与网页制作”网络课程的教学和系统结构设计进行了研究,给出了一个较为合理的网络课程理论构架。     

Web动态服务及控制在物联网中的应用设计

随着网络技术的不断发展,嵌入式系统将不断地和网络相结合。嵌入式Web技术是计算机领域研究的热点,其优点是开发成本低、通用性强,能运行在8位或16位MCU环境中,其丰富的Web用户图形界面使得嵌入式设备具有极好的交互性。因此,一旦在嵌入式设备中集成了web服务,就能实现用户与嵌入式没备低成本、高通用性的信息交流,即客户端利用HTTP浏览器（如IE）,在任何时间、任何地点都能实现与嵌入式设备的信息交互。     

Web2.0及其对互联网的影响

从近期互联网上出现的新名词"Web2.0"展开,回顾了40余年来互联网模式的演进;对互联网出现的新应用和模式进行了讨论和阐述;总结了Web2.0的概念和内涵并指出Web2.0有可能成为未来Internet的一个发展方向;最后,以Web2.0的特点出发,详细讨论了在Web2.0的影响下,互联网可能发生的变化和未来的特点.     

Web日志挖掘与上网行为习惯分析

本文以某校校园网Web日志挖掘为例,首先阐述如何进行Web挖掘,其次运用该理论分析该校Web日志得到用户上网行为习惯,并给出合理化建议,最后引出进一步探索的方向,为以后工作奠定基础。本文采用的挖掘方法具有通用性和实用性,对于类似时序序列趋势分析都可参考本文。     

Personalizing Web sites with mixed-initiative interaction

Personalization refers to the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to an individual user. Commercial Web sites increasingly employ personalization to help retain customers and reduce information overload. A Web site is personalized if a user can interact with the site in an expressive way to achieve his information-seeking goals. Thus, personalizing the user's interaction is the best way to achieve personalization. The paper discusses mixed initiative interaction and the use of XSLT for personalization.     

Physigrams: modelling devices for natural interaction

This paper explores the formal specification of the physical behaviour of devices ‘unplugged’ from their digital effects. By doing this we seek to better understand the nature of physical interaction and the way this can be exploited to improve the design of hybrid devices with both physical and digital features. We use modified state transition networks of the physical behaviour, which we call physiograms, and link these to parallel diagrams of the digital state. These are used to describe a number of features of physical interaction exposed by previous work and relevant properties expressed using a formal semantics of the diagrams. As well as being an analytic tool, the physigrams have been used in a case study where product designers used and adapted them as part of the design process.     

Physical exposure differences between children and adults when using standard and small computer input devices

By the age of five years, 75% of the children in the USA are using computers and at this age they are only one-half to two-thirds the size of and about one-fifth as strong as their adult counterparts. Fourteen children between five and eight years of age and their same-gender biological parents (giving a total of 28 subjects) were evaluated using both a standard and a smaller, child-proportional input device during standardised mouse and keyboard tasks. Typing and computer mouse performance were measured with tracking software, wrist posture was measured with an electrogoniometer and electromyography was used to measure finger flexor and extensor muscle activity in the right arm. With the small mouse, both children and adults performed the mouse task significantly faster and made significantly fewer errors. When using the standard-sized mouse and keyboard, children worked with significantly greater ulnar deviation and significantly less extension than their adult counterparts. When children used the smaller mouse, finger flexor muscle activity, finger extensor muscle activity and ulnar deviation significantly decreased, with little change in wrist extension compared to the standard mouse. No significant differences were observed between the standard and small keyboards for children or their parents. Compared to their adult counterparts, children had to apply twice the relative force, as a percentage of their maximum capacity, to activate the buttons and keys on the input devices. These measured differences may have application in the design of computer input devices for children.